Among the analysts of Syria, a relatively shared consensus as to the reasons why we are seeing the intensification of the conflict in the country in question: it is Russia's commitment to the war in Ukraine and the blows that the pro-Iranian network in the region suffered from Israel (meaning here mainly the degradation of Hezbollah in Lebanon). These two circumstances, according to the popular interpretation, contributed to the creation of such preconditions, which inevitably led to the weakening of the resources that both Moscow and Tehran devoted to the preservation of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hence, a vacuum has emerged in Syria, which the opponents of the regime in Damascus (of a local and regional nature) are trying to take advantage of.
However, other factors can be added to this balance sheet, which also played a role in the intensification of hostilities in Syria.
The failure of the attempt to normalize Turkish-Syrian relations, for example, which was initiated a year ago by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is also such a factor. The very idea of the Turkish president to seek "breaking the ice" with Bashar al-Assad he was stepping on three main premises.
The first was that the Turkish head of state and his Syrian counterpart have a shared interest of a conceptual nature - limiting the influence of the Kurds along the border between the two countries. And this is a priority for Ankara, which, according to Turkish officials, is not sufficiently understood by either Russia or the United States, each of which cooperates with the Kurds in separate sectors of northern and northeastern Syria. This understanding in Turkey continues even though both Vladimir Putin (Operation Olive Branch in 2018) and Donald Trump (Operation Peace Spring in 2019) have allowed Turkish incursions into the Kurdish positions in northern Syria.
The second premise concerns the desire of the Turkish authorities to mediate the return of at least part of the more than 3 million Syrian refugees on their territory, since their presence in Turkey brings political negatives to Erdogan. For this to happen, some basic working cooperation between Ankara and Damascus will be needed, as well as a de-escalation of the conflict in the country, to the extent that it serves rather as an additional refugee incubator.
The third prerequisite for Turkey's interest in normalizing relations with Damascus was Ankara's desire not to lag behind the process of Bashar al-Assad's rehabilitation in the Arab world, in which the UAE played a major role in the last few years. In fact, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Turkey have a shared interest in the fight against drug-trafficking and specifically the captagon produced and exported from Syria, which is a major source of revenue for the regime for the Syrian president. From the beginning of the year to the end of October, the Turkish authorities detained almost 10 million captagon pills.
However, the Syrian president rejected these Turkish diplomatic overtures aimed at the normalization of relations between the two countries, saying that such a development is impossible while Turkey controls territories in the north of Syria (either through its military or its proxy forces on the ground ). In this regard, Assad's determination was such that he even risked displeasing Vladimir Putin.
Another reason for the intensification of the conflict in Syria should also be sought in the actions of the Israeli warplanes, which periodically struck the positions of Iran and Tehran-related Shia militias on the territory of Syria, which further weakened the defensive positions of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. An example in this direction is Hezbollah itself, which had to withdraw its commanders and fighters from the Syrian terrain, including Aleppo, in order to concentrate its efforts in the war with Israel. Media reports, as well as corresponding videos on social media, show how Iran is trying to compensate by moving additional forces from Shiite militias in Iraq to Syria these days.
Another aspect should not be underestimated, which also has a bearing on the events we are witnessing in Syria these days. This is the "dead period" of the US presidential institution - that period of time in which the outgoing administration of Joe Biden has no horizon for planning and action, and the incoming one of Donald Trump has not yet entered into office. There are additional corresponding factors here. One has to do with the fact that when it comes to the Middle East, the Biden administration has focused on trying to achieve at least a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip in its remaining time. The other factor has to do with Trump, during whose first term he began the partial withdrawal of American troops stationed in northern Syria, and who sees no point in their staying there. All this - together with the Russian focus on Ukraine and the material damage sustained by pro-Iranian forces - opens a "window" the ability to edit military-political lines on a map of Syria. And from this "window" both local and regional entities benefit.
Military action against the regime of Bashar al-Assad is led by two separate coalitions on the ground.
A key element of the first coalition is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is the successor to al-Qaeda's former Syrian branch, the Salafist-jihadist al-Nusra Front. Despite HTS efforts to rebrand itself in recent years, it has been designated a terrorist organization, including by the European Union and Turkey. It was this jihadist organization that led and played the biggest role in the capture of Aleppo these days.
The second coalition involved in the renewed conflict in Syria is more complex in composition, but generally represents a network of Islamists, Turkmen and mercenaries united under the banner of the Syrian National Army (SNA). The latter is under the relative control and management of Turkey (the conditional bias here stems from the fact that the various formations that make up the SNA have an unequal degree of proximity to Ankara and, accordingly, a different willingness to fulfill Turkey's interests). And this is only one of the many reasons why these groups under the banner of the SNA often entered into bloody conflicts with each other in recent years. If the HTS concentrates its efforts towards Aleppo and in the southern direction towards the strengthened forces of the Assad regime in Hama, the SNA, at least for now and in sync with Turkish interests, orients its actions mainly against the positions of the Kurds - at this stage in the direction of Tel Rifat, but it remains to be seen whether it will also target the other territories controlled by the Kurds, located west of the river. Euphrates (as the biggest target would be the city of Manbij). It was Tell Rifat and Manbij that were among Turkey's main targets, present in Erdogan's rhetoric since 2020. The reason for this was the assumed, but still unfulfilled, commitment from Moscow to Ankara, according to which Russia had to demilitarize the Kurdish formations located in the mentioned cities. Reciprocal Russian objections against Turkey concerned the fact that Ankara has not shown a desire to de-radicalize the opposition to the Syrian regime formations that are under its influence.
In this case, however, the important thing is that - although with a different focus of actions and overcoming, at least for the time being, the enmities between themselves - the two coalitions around the HTSH and SNA act rather in a coordinated manner. The latter would not be possible if there were not a powerful regional factor like Turkey, which has both the resources and the interest to consolidate such operational cooperation. Of course, the readiness of the HTS to act independently at any moment should not be underestimated (the real reason Turkey designated the organization in question as a terrorist organization years ago was because it refused to accommodate the interests of Turkish-controlled Islamist groups in Northwestern Syria). And there is already information about the resumption of tension between the HTSH and the SNA.
Furthermore, the actions of the HTS and the SNA help Turkish interests in Syria, insofar as through them Bashar al-Assad will be punished for his intransigence, and the Syrian Kurds will be subjected to additional military pressure. Thus, the developing circumstances will give additional arguments to Turkey in the form of "Astana" (Russia, Iran, Turkey) and will assert with greater force Turkey's well-known priorities regarding Northern Syria and Iraq to the incoming new US administration. Exposing the weakness of the regime of the Syrian president, however, also hides a prosaic risk - in order to survive, he will have to increase his volume of dependence on Russia and Iran. Still, Assad remains the only king who is a hostage in his own kingdom.