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New Political, Military Reality in Lebanon a Year after Assad’s Ouster 

People raise the Syrian flag during the one-year anniversary marking the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Tripoli, Lebanon.
People raise the Syrian flag during the one-year anniversary marking the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Tripoli, Lebanon.
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New Political, Military Reality in Lebanon a Year after Assad’s Ouster 

People raise the Syrian flag during the one-year anniversary marking the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Tripoli, Lebanon.
People raise the Syrian flag during the one-year anniversary marking the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Tripoli, Lebanon.

The collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in December 2024 created major political, security and economic changes in Lebanon. Beirut also rid itself of what remained of Damascus’ influence - after Syria withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2005 following 30 years of military and political hegemony - through Assad’s allies, namely Hezbollah.

With the ouster Assad, Lebanon became free to make its political decisions away from the influence of Damascus and its allies. Lebanon and Syria can establish mutual official relations, secure their shared border and improve the trade exchange between them.

Tehran-Beirut route severed

Head of Lebanon’s Saydet al-Jabal Gathering, former MP Fares Souaid told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Lebanon has changed. The most important thing that happened was that the new Syria severed the Tehran-Beirut route that used to supply Hezbollah with all of its security, military and financial means.”

Now, the party has to resort to smuggling to get what it needs, he added. “That option is not secured by military units working for Iran, forcing Hezbollah to approach the new situation in Lebanon with a lot more pragmatism than before.”

He said the party has been forced to take a “humble” approach to “critical issues.”

“We saw how Hezbollah did not quit the government even though it objected to cabinet decisions, especially the one related to imposing state monopoly over arms,” he explained. The decision effectively calls on Hezbollah to disarm.

The party was unable to take any steps to counter the decision because the “real route that has been feeding it has been cut,” Souaid stressed.

Developments, past and present, have shown that anything negative or positive taking place in Syria will impact Lebanon, he went on to say. “If Syria is well, then Lebanon is well.”

He said Lebanon still believes that Syria under President Ahmed al-Sharaa has a promising future and relations between Beirut and Damascus will also be promising.

The relations are already on the right track with the establishment of joint security and military committees sponsored by Saudi Arabia, he remarked. Efforts have already been exerted to secure the shared border between them ahead of demarcation starting from the Shebaa Farms.

Such coordination between Lebanese and Syrian security and military agencies “never happened under Assad rule. So, this is a new development for both countries,” he revealed.

Treaties with Syria

The neighbors currently appeared focused on reshaping their relations in a way that preserves their mutual interests. Souaid acknowledged, however, that pending complex issues remain.

He underlined the need to annul all political, security and economic treaties that were signed during Syria’s hegemony over Lebanon.

Lebanon has appointed an ambassador to Damascus, while the latter has yet to name an envoy to Beirut, he noted.

He also said that the Syrians are prioritizing resolving the issue of Syrian detainees held in Lebanese jails.

The issue is a “black mark” in the relations between the two countries. Lebanon’s justice minister must resolve this file so that it does not complicate efforts to forge good ties, Souaid urged.

Pending files

Lebanon has been perceived as dealing “coolly” with Syria’s insistence on resolving the detainee file.

Some Lebanese officials have for years also complained about Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the burden they have on the state. An informed security source told Asharq Al-Awsat that with Assad’s collapse, this issue was no longer a “major crisis”.

It revealed that half of the Syrian refugees who were in Arsal and the northern Akkar region in Lebanon have returned to their home country. This has been felt by the drop in the numbers of Syrian laborers in Lebanon.

The shared border is another issue of pressing concern for the neighbors.

After Assad’s ouster, Lebanon’s northern and eastern borders are no longer open to the regime’s allies and outlaws, especially drug and other smugglers.

The source said: “The most important achievement on the security level has been curbing the smuggling of weapons from Syria to Lebanon and money from Lebanon to Syria.”

“Captagon factories along both sides of the border have also been destroyed, leading to the dismantling of drug smuggling networks and culminating in the arrest of Lebanon’s most wanted drug smuggler, Noah Zeiter, who was seeking refuge in Syria before Assad’s ouster,” added the source.

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A ‘New Syria’ Becomes the Clearest Example of Israel’s Hostility Toward Its Neighbors

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the buffer zone with Syria on Nov. 19, accompanied by senior defense, foreign affairs, and security officials. (Government Press Office)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the buffer zone with Syria on Nov. 19, accompanied by senior defense, foreign affairs, and security officials. (Government Press Office)
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A ‘New Syria’ Becomes the Clearest Example of Israel’s Hostility Toward Its Neighbors

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the buffer zone with Syria on Nov. 19, accompanied by senior defense, foreign affairs, and security officials. (Government Press Office)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the buffer zone with Syria on Nov. 19, accompanied by senior defense, foreign affairs, and security officials. (Government Press Office)

On a rainy November night in 2025, as Ramallah groaned under an Israeli military assault just meters from the presidential compound, a senior Palestinian official smiled bitterly. “I don’t want to talk about Palestine,” he said. “Nor do I wish to repeat slogans about Israel being a colonial state without borders. What I want to talk about now is Syria.”

For this official, Syria has become the starkest proof that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not only rejects any genuine peace, but also appears unwilling to tolerate neighboring states at all.

He argued that this is evident even after the new political leadership in Damascus declared openly that it sought neither war nor hostility with Israel. Yet Israel, he said, has continued to violate Syrian sovereignty with increasingly blunt military operations.

The official’s point was simple: Israel’s hostility, in his view, is not confined to Palestinians. “If Hamas launched a war on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Hezbollah started firing its own strikes, and the Houthis joined Iran’s so-called ‘support front,’ Syria did the opposite: it stayed out of the picture, and even more than that.”

‘No threat to Israel’

After coming to power, Syria’s new leadership declared that it posed “no threat to any neighboring state, including Israel.”

The fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 cost Iran one of its most important strategic hubs in the region - Syria. This should have created common ground for Syrian-Israeli understandings, the official noted.

“I fear the Israelis have forgotten these facts, especially now that Syrian territory is no longer a playground for Iranian militias,” the Palestinian official said.

The United States, Türkiye, and Azerbaijan offered to mediate talks and expressed readiness to broker security arrangements ensuring a stable border. Even when Israel grumbled about indirect contacts, Damascus agreed to direct meetings. Six rounds were held between Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

According to Israeli sources, Damascus signaled significant flexibility: it was prepared to negotiate a comprehensive peace treaty in exchange for the return of all territory lost in 1967 and 2024, while also showing openness to interim proposals, such as leasing the Golan Heights to Israel for up to 15 years or reverting to 1974 security understandings.

Those same sources also claimed Syria was willing to join the Abraham Accords, effectively extending an unprecedented hand of peace to Israel.

Raids and ground incursions

Israel’s response, however, took a different direction. Since December 2024, before Damascus could stabilize its new order, Israel carried out roughly 500 airstrikes on Syrian military airports and bases, destroying an estimated 85 percent of Syria’s defensive capabilities.

Israeli forces seized around 450 square kilometers of territory, from Mount Hermon’s summit to parts of Daraa province, penetrating up to 20 kilometers inside Syria and establishing nine military sites.

Israel also inflamed internal tensions under the claim of “protecting Druze allies,” despite long-standing accusations of discrimination against Druze citizens inside Israel itself.

Israeli officials questioned the new Syrian leadership’s intentions by invoking old links to the Al-Nusra Front, even though Israeli field hospitals in Safed, Haifa, and Tel Aviv had, in past years, treated numerous Nusra fighters.

Who can restrain Netanyahu?

In recent days, Israeli reports claimed US President Donald Trump “rebuked” Israel and Netanyahu over their approach to the new Syria, urging a strategic shift.

Responding, reportedly, to appeals from Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, Trump appears inclined to pursue a constructive course with Damascus.

Many now believe the White House is the only actor capable of restraining Netanyahu’s Syria policy.

But until any real change appears on the ground, analysts continue to ask: What message is Israel sending to its region through its handling of Syria?

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Four Iranian Narratives on the Collapse of the ‘Resistance’ in Syria  

Iran's General Qassem Soleimani makes a phone call near the historic Citadel of Aleppo, winter 2016. (Fars)
Iran's General Qassem Soleimani makes a phone call near the historic Citadel of Aleppo, winter 2016. (Fars)
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Four Iranian Narratives on the Collapse of the ‘Resistance’ in Syria  

Iran's General Qassem Soleimani makes a phone call near the historic Citadel of Aleppo, winter 2016. (Fars)
Iran's General Qassem Soleimani makes a phone call near the historic Citadel of Aleppo, winter 2016. (Fars)

One hundred and ninety-two days separated the last meeting between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Syria’s ousted President Bashar al-Assad in Tehran from the moment the Syrian regime fell to the opposition in December 2024.

That interval was no footnote in the Syrian war. It became a sharp mirror inside Tehran, reflecting the magnitude of the wager Iran’s leadership had placed on Assad, and the limits of its ability to anticipate the trajectory of the conflict and shifts in the regional balance of power.

At that meeting, Khamenei laid out the essence of his “Syrian doctrine” amid changing realities across the “Axis of Resistance.” Syria, he argued, was no ordinary state but one with a “special place” because its identity, in his view, stemmed from its role in this axis.

Since “resistance is Syria’s defining identity and must be preserved,” he addressed Assad not as a political ally but as a partner in that identity. He praised Assad for once saying that “the cost of resistance is lower than the cost of compromise” and that “whenever we retreat, the other side advances.” Thus, Khamenei reaffirmed his full - if belated – gamble on the regime’s survival, even as signs of collapse were unmistakable on the ground.

Less than seven months later, the regime would fall. Assad’s collapse would yield several Iranian narratives: the Supreme Leader’s, the Revolutionary Guard’s, the diplomatic narrative, and a fourth voiced from within the system itself, one that raised blunt questions about the price of Iran’s Syrian gamble.

Khamenei’s narrative

In his first speech after Assad’s fall, Khamenei offered a hard-edged explanation: the event, he said, was the product of a “joint American-Zionist plot,” aided by neighboring states. He spoke of factors that he claimed prevented Iran from providing the necessary support, including Israeli and US strikes inside Syria and the closure of air and land corridors to Iranian supplies.

He concluded that the decisive flaw lay within Syria itself, where the “spirit of resistance” had eroded in state institutions.

He stressed that the regime’s fall did not mean the fall of the idea of “resistance,” predicting that “patriotic Syrian youth” would one day revive it in a new form.

This narrative rejects the notion of strategic defeat: for Khamenei, what happened is not the end of the struggle, but a harsh phase in a longer one.

Revolutionary Guard’s narrative

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) adopted a language closer to national security logic than pure ideology, though it drew from the same lexicon. In 2013, cleric Mehdi Taeb, head of the IRGC’s Ammar Headquarters think tank, framed the equation starkly: “Syria is our 35th province... If the enemy attacks Syria or Khuzestan, our priority is to keep Syria.”

With that shocking sentence, Syria was elevated to the level of Iranian strategic geography, sometimes above parts of Iran itself.

Late General Qassem Soleimani, then commander of the Quds Force, became the chief architect of this approach: confronting threats abroad by building multinational militia networks and using the “protection of shrines” as a mobilizing slogan that fused ideology with national security calculations.

A month after Assad’s fall, at a memorial for Soleimani, Khamenei reaffirmed this school of thought, linking the defense of shrines in Damascus and Iraq to the defense of “Iran as a sanctuary,” aiming to bind various fronts into a single cross-border security-sectarian struggle.

After the Syrian regime’s collapse, this narrative preserved its core: success or failure is not defined by who sits in Damascus, but by whether the IRGC’s influence networks remain intact and whether Iran still has access to Syrian depth.

Full withdrawal would amount, in this logic, to admitting that the “35th province” had slipped from the map, so the IRGC will continue to search for any possible foothold.

Diplomatic narrative

Iran’s diplomatic apparatus sought to tell a softer story. Weeks before the fall, Khamenei dispatched his adviser Ali Larijani to Damascus and Beirut with reassuring messages for Assad and other allies, publicly asserting that events in Syria and Lebanon “directly concern Iran’s national security.”

Days later, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Damascus just six days before the collapse, even posing with shawarma in a downtown restaurant to signal “normalcy” and dismiss talk of impending downfall as “psychological warfare.”

It was the peak of the gap between diplomatic messaging and a disintegrating reality.

Afterward, the Foreign Ministry adopted a defensive formula: Iran had “responded to the request of an allied government”, but “cannot decide on behalf of peoples.” Thus, responsibility was shifted toward Syrian internal failures and the external “conspiracy” often invoked by Khamenei.

This narrative treats Syria as one file among many, not an existential arena as seen by the IRGC and the Leader.

‘Open account’ narrative

The fourth narrative emerged, unexpectedly, from within the establishment itself. For the first time, semi-public acknowledgments surfaced that the economic return on Iran’s Syrian adventure was nearly nil and that the political-security “investment” had resulted in something resembling a net loss.

In 2020, former member of the Iranian parliamentary national security and foreign policy committee, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh revealed that Tehran had spent “$20-30 billion” in Syria, insisting: “This is the people’s money and must be recovered.”

Five years later, he returned with a more bitter charge: Syria’s debts to Iran were effectively settled through “land without oil, cow farms without cows, and empty promises.”

This view is no outlier. Over a decade, Iranian protest slogans increasingly linked “Gaza, Lebanon, Syria” with bread, fuel, and economic hardship at home.

With Assad gone, critics more easily argue that Iran spent tens of billions and paid a human cost among its fighters and proxies, only to end up with almost no influence in Damascus.

For decision-makers, this narrative becomes domestic pressure against any large-scale return to Syria.

Four scenarios for Tehran

Taken together, these narratives reveal a deep contradiction: the IRGC and Khamenei refuse to concede that Iran “lost Syria,” treating the episode as one phase in a longer struggle. Meanwhile, the diplomatic and economic narratives acknowledge, implicitly, that the previous intervention model is no longer sustainable.

Four broad scenarios emerge. The first is a return through proxies, closest to the IRGC’s logic: Iran would rebuild influence from the ground up through militias - old or newly recruited - to pressure any future authority in Damascus.

The second is regional repositioning without Syria, in which Iran shifts resources to arenas where it still holds leverage, including Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza, while limiting its role in Syria to preventing hostile entrenchment.

The third is a “gray” re-entry: a gradual, negotiated, non-confrontational return through localized deals or modest economic and security projects, allowing Tehran to claim continued presence without the cost of backing a single ruler.

The fourth is institutionalizing the loss: Iran accepts Syria’s departure from its strategic depth, but repackages the outcome within a narrative of “conspiracy and steadfastness,” using it to tighten internal control while maintaining symbolic presence through shrine rhetoric and minimal diplomacy.

Across all scenarios, one fact remains. Syria, which was once described as more vital than Khuzestan and the “distinct identity of resistance”, is no longer what it was before December 8, 2024 when the regime collapsed.

Tehran can invoke time, the IRGC can search for openings, diplomats can polish their statements, and critics can lament “land without oil.” But one question looms over every debate in Iran: Can Tehran afford a second Syrian-sized gamble after emerging from the first still trying to convince itself that the “resistance factor” remains standing, even as its Syrian pillar has broken?

Features

A Year After Assad’s Fall, Families of Missing Detainees Languish without Answers 

Amina Beqai holds a photo of her husband, who went missing after he was arrested by security forces under the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, November 23, 2025. (Reuters)
Amina Beqai holds a photo of her husband, who went missing after he was arrested by security forces under the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, November 23, 2025. (Reuters)
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A Year After Assad’s Fall, Families of Missing Detainees Languish without Answers 

Amina Beqai holds a photo of her husband, who went missing after he was arrested by security forces under the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, November 23, 2025. (Reuters)
Amina Beqai holds a photo of her husband, who went missing after he was arrested by security forces under the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, November 23, 2025. (Reuters)

A year after dictator Bashar al-Assad's ouster in Syria, little has changed in Amina Beqai's desperate quest. She types her missing husband's name yet again into an internet search box, hoping for answers to a 13-year-old question. In vain.

Beqai has nowhere else to turn.

A National Commission for Missing Persons established in May has been gathering evidence of enforced disappearances under Assad, but has yet to offer families any clues on the estimated 150,000 people who vanished in his notorious prisons.

They include Beqai's husband Mahmoud, arrested by Syria's security forces at their home near Damascus on April 17, 2012, and her brother Ahmed, detained in August that year.

Assad's overthrow initially stirred hope that prison records could tell families if, when and how their loved ones died. Mass graves dug by Assad's forces across Syria could be exhumed. Victims could be properly buried.

None of that has transpired.

"It's been a year. They didn't do anything ... Is it thinkable that they didn't even get the documents for these men? Showing us the truth is what we want," Beqai told Reuters.

FADING HOPES

As opposition fighters swept through Syrian towns last year on the way to capturing Damascus, they rushed first to the jails, flinging doors open to free thousands of bewildered prisoners.

On December 8, 2024, hours after Assad fled to Russia, the fighters freed dozens of prisoners from Sednaya, dubbed "the human slaughterhouse" by Amnesty International for the industrial-scale torture and executions undertaken there.

The emerging detainees did not include Beqai's loved ones.

"When the prisons were open, and they didn't come back – that was the shock. That was when the hope ended, it really died," Beqai said. But she demands to know how, when and where her husband and brother may have died.

With no updates from the national commission, Beqai said she had become "obsessed" with her online hunt, scouring pictures of dead detainees and scans of prison documents published by Syrian news outlets who entered jails and security branches after Assad's fall.

"All there is left to do is sit and search," she said.

Such documents have revealed crucial information.

Sarah al-Khattab last saw her husband heading into a police station in Syria's south on February 9, 2019 to reconcile with Assad's government after years holed up with insurgents.

She has had no news of him since.

A spreadsheet of dead Sednaya prisoners seen by Reuters after Assad's fall included his name, Ali Mohsen al-Baridi, dating his death as October 22, 2019 from "stopped pulse and breathing" with orders that the body not be given to his family.

Reuters passed its finding to the Syrian Justice and Accountability Center, an advocacy group working with families of the missing, who informed Khattab.

COMMISSION SEEKS HELP, OVERSIGHT

The national commission was established by new President Ahmed al-Sharaa. The commission's media adviser, Zeina Shahla, told Reuters its mandate includes any missing Syrian, no matter the circumstances.

"When it comes to the pain of the families, maybe we really are being slow. But this file needs progress to come carefully, in a way that is scientific and systemic and not rushed," she said.

Next year, the commission hopes to launch a database of all the missing using documents from prisons and other locations. Exhuming mass graves requires more technical expertise and probably won't happen until 2027, Shahla said.

The commission has met with Syrian advocacy groups and some families. In November, it signed a cooperation agreement with the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Commission on Missing Persons, which have global expertise on the issue.

Syria's commission hopes that will lead to more training for its personnel and access to equipment in short supply in Syria, including DNA testing labs for exhumed remains.

"We welcome any kind of cooperation and support we can receive, as long as the issue remains under (our commission's) authority,” Shahla said.

RELATIVES, ACTIVISTS DEMAND BETTER

The government's approach has upset organizations who developed expertise on enforced disappearances while in exile during the Assad era, six rights groups told Reuters.

Many were excited to apply that knowledge on the ground with Assad gone, but say the government's centralized approach has excluded them, slowed progress and left families in limbo.

"When you have as many as a quarter of a million people missing, you can't do that. You break up the work," said Ahmad Helmi, a Syrian activist who leads Ta'afi, an initiative focused on missing detainees and prison survivors.

Activists also accuse the commission of "monopolizing" detention-related documents.

In September, Syrian authorities briefly detained Amer Matar, an activist who founded a virtual museum to preserve detainees' experiences, accusing him of illegally accessing official documents for personal purposes.

In November, the commission urged families not to believe any detention-related documents shared on unofficial online platforms, like the ones Beqai has been searching, and threatened legal action against those outlets.

"The commission wants to monopolize the file, but it lacks the tools, the competence and the transparency. It demands the trust of families but delivers no results," Matar said.

Shahla said the commission is "the central, official body authorized to reveal the fate" of missing people and that families needed one place to go to for accurate answers.

Agnes Callamard, head of Amnesty International, said the commission should issue regular updates about its progress and consider granting financial aid to relatives of missing people.

"The most important thing ... the national commission can do at the moment is ensuring that families feel they are being heard and being supported," she told Reuters.

As Syria marks a year since Assad's downfall, many people remain exhausted by the same burden that plagued them under his rule: the lack of closure.

Alia Darraji last saw her son Yazan on November 1, 2014, as he left home to meet friends near Damascus. He never returned.

In the last year, the elderly woman has spent time in "truth tents" - sit-ins demanding information on disappeared Syrians that were unthinkable under Assad. While solidarity has helped, it hasn't given her what her heart aches for.

"We were hoping to find their bodies, to bury them, or to find out where they are," Darraji said.