Syria’s rebels exploit weaknesses in Iran’s proxies to launch surprise offensive

By Mostafa Salem, CNN

(CNN) — Rebels in Syria have made rapid advances towards the country’s second biggest city, Aleppo, reigniting a conflict that had largely laid dormant for years.

After making only limited gains in recent years, the rebels have already captured some 60 towns and villages that were controlled by government forces, as well as a Syrian army base and a military research center only a hundred yards from the country’s second largest city, Aleppo.

On Friday, the armed rebel groups claimed to have entered the city, which has been under government control since 2016.

Earlier that day, an artillery shell struck Aleppo University’s student housing, killing four people, according to Syria’s state news agency, SANA, which blamed opposition factions for the attack. A rebel group spokesperson, Hassan Abdulghani, called the accusations “baseless lies.”

On Thursday, at least 15 civilians, including six children and two women, were killed, and 36 others were injured in airstrikes and shelling on rebel-held areas in Aleppo and Idlib countryside, according to the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group.

“The goal of the operation … is to liberate our occupied territories from the criminal regime and Iranian militias, as well as to establish a safe environment for displaced people to return to their cities and towns,” Abdulghani told CNN.

The Syrian military said it’s “confronting terrorist organizations” and claimed to have inflicted “heavy losses” on the groups since Wednesday.

Wednesday’s surprise operation marks the first significant conflagration between Syrian rebels and the regime since March 2020, when Russia and Turkey mediated a ceasefire in the north of the country.

The conflict has since remained largely dormant, with low-level clashes between the rebels and Assad’s regime. More than 300,000 civilians have been killed in more than a decade of war, according to the United Nations, and millions of people have been displaced across the region.

Syria’s civil war began during the 2011 Arab Spring as the regime suppressed a pro-democracy uprising against Assad, who has been president since 2000. The country plunged into a full-scale civil war as a rebel force was formed, known as the Free Syrian Army, to combat government troops.

The conflict swelled as other regional actors and world powers – from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States to Russia – piled in, escalating the civil war into what some observers described as a “proxy war.” ISIS was also able to gain a foothold in the country before suffering significant blows.

Over the past year, Iran has watched its prized proxy Hezbollah get battered by a ferocious Israeli aerial and ground campaign in Lebanon. The militant group, which was credited for helping save the Assad regime from Syrian rebels, is now significantly weakened, with most of its leaders assassinated.

Turkey had attempted to halt the rebel offensive to “prevent further escalation of tensions in the region due to Israel’s aggression,” a Turkish security source told CNN, referring to the wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

The source said that the rebels launched what was supposed to be a “limited operation” against the Assad regime after the Syrian military and allied militias struck rebel-held Idlib city and killed more than 30 civilians. The rebels expanded the operation after regime forces fled the towns surrounding Aleppo, the source said. CNN cannot independently verify those claims.

Iranian state media said that Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Kioumars Pourhashemi, a senior Iranian military adviser in Syria, was killed in Aleppo.

In a call with his Syrian counterpart to discuss the escalation, the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States and Israel of “reactivating” the rebels, and “stressed the continued support” of Iran to the Syrian government and army.

The Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on the Syrian authorities to “quickly restore order in this area and restore constitutional order.”

Weakened Axis of Resistance

Analysts say the rebels are using a vacuum left by a weakened Hezbollah to advance in Syria.

“The rebels see an opportunity to test the front lines with Hezbollah weakened, a pressured Iran and a Russia busy with Ukraine … the rebels were surprised by their success and they pushed harder than they anticipated,” Nanar Hawach, a senior analyst focused on Syria at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said.

“The rebels see a shift in powers.”

Iran and Russia have for more than a decade supplied forces and arms to help Assad remain in power. Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has supported rebel groups and has deployed Turkish forces to retain command over the rebel-held strongholds of northern Syria.

Iran has maintained military presence in Syria as part of an expansive effort to keep Assad in power and protect a strategic regional footprint. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has been targeted by Israel over past years, including an airstrike on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus in April that killed a top IRGC commander, and prompted Tehran’s first ever direct strike on Israel.

Iran’s proxy Hezbollah has been instrumental in assisting Assad regain territory lost to militias and rebel groups. Its fighters fought on behalf of Assad against Syria’s armed opposition groups and the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra front. Syria has served as a primary logistical backbone for the organization to build its missile arsenal in its home country Lebanon.

Over the past year, Hezbollah’s fighting forces shifted their focus toward Israel, pulling troops from Syria to Lebanon, in an attempt to consolidate their losses as Assad grew closer to Gulf Arab states and became less engaged with Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” a loose grouping of regional Iran-allied militias, Hawach said.

Israel has since inflicted major damage on the group in Lebanon, killing its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and eliminating many of the group’s top brass. The Israeli military in September launched an all-out offensive on Shia-majority areas across the country where Hezbollah wields significant influence and pummeled other parts of Lebanon.

“An objective for Hezbollah was to have a tangible presence in Syria, this diminished throughout the last year because of the pulling of troops especially with the Israeli escalation in Lebanon,” he said.

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