Iran in direct contact with groups in Syria’s new leadership, Iranian official says

Iran has opened a direct line of communication with opposition forces in Syria’s new leadership since its ally Bashar al-Assad was ousted, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday, in an attempt to “prevent a hostile trajectory” between the countries.

The lightning advance by the opposition’s Military Operations Administration marked one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations. Al-Assad’s fall as president removed a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world.

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Hours after al-Assad’s fall, Iran said it expected relations with Damascus to continue based on the two countries’ “far-sighted and wise approach” and called for the establishment of an inclusive government representing all segments of Syrian society.

There is little doubt about Tehran’s concern about how the change of power in Damascus will affect Iran’s influence in Syria, the lynchpin of its regional clout.

But there is no panic, three Iranian officials told Reuters, as Tehran seeks diplomatic avenues to establish contact with people whom one of the officials called “those within Syria’s new ruling groups whose views are closer to Iran’s.”

“The main concern for Iran is whether al-Assad’s successor will push Syria away from Tehran’s orbit,” a second Iranian officials said. “That is a scenario Iran is keen to avoid.”

A hostile post-Assad Syria would deprive Lebanese armed group Hezbollah of its only land supply route and deny Iran its main access to the Mediterranean and the “front line” with Israel.

One of the senior officials said Iran’s clerical rulers, facing the loss of an important ally in Damascus and the return of Donald Trump to the white House in January, were open to engaging with Syria’s new leaders.

“This engagement is key to stabilize ties and avoiding further regional tensions,” the official said.

Contacts with Syrian leadership

Tehran has established contacts with two groups inside the new leadership and the level of interaction will be assessed in the coming days after a meeting at Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, a top security body, he said.

Two of the Iranian officials said Tehran was wary of Trump using al-Assad’s removal as leverage to intensify economic and political pressure on Iran, “either to force concessions or to destabilize the Islamic Republic.”

After pulling the United States out of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers in 2018, then-President Trump pursued a “maximum pressure” policy that led to extreme economic hardship and exacerbated public discontent in Iran. Trump is staffing his planned administration with hawks on Iran.

In 2020, Trump, as president, ordered a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander and mastermind of overseas attacks on US interests and those of its allies.

The fall of al-Assad exposed Tehran’s dwindling strategic leverage in the region, exacerbated by Israel’s military offensives against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Iran’s clerical rulers spent billions of dollars propping up al-Assad during the civil war that erupted in Syria in 2011 and deployed its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to Syria to keep its ally in power and maintain Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” to Israel and US influence in the Middle East.

Al-Assad’s fall removes a critical link in Iran’s regional resistance chain that served as a crucial transit route for Tehran to supply arms and fund its proxies and particularly Hezbollah.

With Reuters

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