Jamie Dettmer
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. He covered Syria’s civil war from 2013 to 2016 for Voice of America and the Daily Beast.
As Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s forces turned tail and fled Aleppo in the face of a long-planned and stunning offensive by an alliance of Islamist militias in the country’s northwest, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was left fulminating, casting around for an explanation.
The fall of Syria’s second-largest city to the alliance led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — an al Qaeda breakaway — isn’t just a humiliation for Assad. It’s also a humiliation of his allies Iran and, to some extent, Russia.
In 2016, Iran-commanded Shiite militias — aided by a scorched-earth bombing campaign from Russia — had helped the Syrian autocrat grab Aleppo back from insurgents who had controlled around half the city for four years. After that, it was meant to be safe in Assad’s hands. But last week, it took all of 72 hours to overrun Aleppo, reigniting the long-running Syrian civil war initially sparked by Assad’s brutal repression of pro-democracy protests.
Why?
Upon his arrival in Damascus for urgent talks, Araghchi offered the most damning explanation he could think of — it was all a “plot by the Israeli regime to destabilize the region.” But while it’s convenient for Tehran to blame the Zionists — Israeli missiles and airstrikes may have marginally helped the insurgents — Aleppo’s fall has little to do with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aspirations to reshape the Middle East and much more to do with the state of Assad’s armed forces.
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