Assad reached out to Trump before fleeing to Moscow, I wonder how Putin will feel about this.

Leroy wrote on Dec 9^th, 2024 at 1:50pm:

The warlord Abu Mohammad al-Jolani—formerly of al-Qaeda, then al-Nusra, and now the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS—now rules Damascus and much of Syria—but far from all. On Wednesday, his faction announced that “Muslims and Christians in all their diversity will be respected.” Whether this suggests a genuine wish, or whether this is simply the latest chameleon twist in al-Jolani’s long history of deception on the road to creating an Islamist state, has yet to be seen. (Of course, the Western media are easily manipulated by small details. Yesterday, CNN actually analyzed al-Jolani like this: “How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary’.” Never has a blazer, or any sartorial triviality, assumed such geopolitical significance.)

It is also yet to be seen what al-Jolani—a terrorist who fought the Americans in Iraq and was imprisoned, for a time, at Abu Ghraib—has in mind for Syria. What we know is that for decades, the fate of Syria has been in the hands of ruthless faraway contenders, chiefly the Iranian tyrant Ayatollah Khamenei, Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, whose airpower enabled Assad to survive. They long used the Syrian people as puppets in their anti-American, anti-Israeli resistance axis.

These men weren’t the only ones exploiting Syria. So was Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, who is bombing Kurdish civilians in Syria as I write these words.

It is worth recalling the other outside player here: the now-dead Hamas chieftain Yahya Sinwar. His reckless invasion of Israel and savage butchery on October 7, 2023, was meant to unleash the liquidation of the Jewish republic. Instead, his pogrom has been a disaster not just for the Palestinians, whose civilians have suffered grievously, but also for the entire Axis of Resistance. The war he started has shattered the vassals of Iran’s would-be empire—Hamas and Hezbollah—and ultimately, perhaps, the regime itself.

Russia, too, is a big loser. Ever since Catherine the Great, the Russian empire has aspired to Near Eastern power. In the 1770s, Catherine sent a Russian fleet that bombarded Lebanon and backed Arab leaders to bring down the Ottomans. In the late 1940s, Stalin initially backed the creation of Israel in the hope that the socialistic Jewish republic would be a Soviet ally. When Israel became a French, then U.S., ally, the Soviets aggressively backed Arab dictators: Hafez al-Assad became a major ally of Leonid Brezhnev and frequent visitor to Moscow, giving the Soviets naval bases on the Mediterranean.

For those who remember this history, it is no surprise that Putin came to Bashar’s aid after the Arab Spring. Brutal Russian bombardment and civilian slaughter won the civil war for Assad and earned Putin continued possession of the Tartus naval base and other infrastructure in Latakia that, until now, made Russia a regional arbiter. Russia’s easy and bloody success in Syria was one factor that gave Putin the confidence of a military supremo to invade Ukraine.

A catastrophic failure of U.S. policy also plays a role in this unfolding story. President Obama’s failure to enforce his famous “red line” when Assad used chemical weapons against his own people was a disaster for American power in the region and part of his administration’s abandonment of the region to Iranian hegemony. To paraphrase Talleyrand, not just a moral disgrace—even worse, a bad mistake. President-elect Trump says he wants no part of this conflict. Yet with fairly minor deployments of U.S. power, he will be able to influence Syria. Keen to win the golden laurels of Middle East peacemaker already gilded by the Abraham Accords, he will not be able to keep out of Syria, which will need to be part of any grand deal for the region.

Turkey and Israel are the other two major regional contenders. Israel feared Assad’s aggressive Syria—and for understandable reasons. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syrian commandos and tank forces performed well against Israel in their surprise attack. When Syria sank into civil war, Israel preferred the fragmented Syria nominally under a broken Assad to an Islamist one. Now it appears it may be getting an Islamist Syria. On Sunday, Israel bombed fleeing Hezbollah forces and chemical weapons facilities now unprotected by Russia. It also occupied more of Golan to prevent HTS forces seizing positions there. Israel will take no chances and now faces Turkish power taking the place of the Iranians and the Russians.
https://www.thefp.com/p/simon-sebag-montefiore-after-assad-syria-putin-trump