The West is trying to lay the groundwork for gaining leverage over the current authorities in Damascus
It has been six months since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham [
1
] group led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani (now known as Ahmed al-Sharaa) seized power in Syria. Shortly before that, half a world away, Donald Trump had won the U.S. presidential election, and all eyes turned to see what his foreign policy would look like. Nobody was watching more closely than Syria’s new authorities, who were well aware ...
Author: Efecan Ozdem, 1st year Master's student of HSE University - Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences
The civil war in Syria, which had been ongoing for more than a decade and appeared to be frozen in recent years, unexpectedly ended with a victory for the opposition groups in December 2024. Despite aid from Russia and Iran, the Assad regime faced a sudden collapse on ...
Israel risks repeating Iran's mistakes by opening a new front in Syria while having conflicts in multiple fronts
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza following Operation "Al-Aqsa Flood" and the escalation of tensions on the Lebanese border after Israel targeted several Hezbollah leaders, Tel Aviv has begun ...
The new Syrian authorities cannot simply cut ties with Moscow. They know well that Russia can be helpful in many pragmatic ways, including counterbalancing other actors, e.g. Turkey, the U.S. and the Gulf states
The first two months of the new authorities in ...
... choices.
At the systemic level, the region faces two key goals which are to break free from the vicious cycle of entrenched interpretations of reality and to restore balance between formal and informal institutions, thereby strengthening statehood.
Syria: The Crossroad of Middle Eastern Uncertainty
The process of lifting sanctions will be slow, and the legal mechanisms of unilateral US sanctions against Syria may remain in force for years and decades, despite political changes
The change of power in Syria raises the question of possible changes to the US sanctions regime against the country. Over the past two decades, Syria has been among the countries ...
Great powers claim to be great because they cannot afford the luxury of pure situational opportunism, typical for many other international actors
The sudden fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, as far as one can judge, came as a complete surprise for all external actors, Moscow including. Of course, many Russian area studies experts for a long time warned about the growing economic and social problems in Syria, as well as about incredible ...
The era of great-power dominance is fading. Moscow’s future lies in mastering regional diplomacy
In 2015, when the Russian Armed Forces launched a military operation in Syria, it marked a turning point in the post-Soviet era. The collapse of the USSR had caused a dramatic decline in Russia’s international standing. For two and a half decades after 1991, Moscow worked to regain lost status, prestige, and influence on ...
Syria’s reconstruction is one of the main and most pressing challenges of its post-war development
Syria’s reconstruction is one of the main and most pressing challenges of its post-war development. The civil war has ended per se, but the confpct ...
... in carrying out attacks on the IRI, in particular by granting it airspace. According to several reports, GCC states are
refusing
to grant it to Israel. Thus, they will likely try to remain neutral in the event of a possible regional escalation.
Will Syria become involved?
The probability of the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR) becoming involved in the war deserves special attention. Despite the fact that Syria has territorial claims against Israel (the Golan Heights were occupied by Israel during the Six-Day ...
