Lawrence Freedman
In my self-assessment for 2024 on the Russo-Ukraine war I noted that this conflict had a settled structure which meant that far less had changed during 2024 than one might have expected. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, 2025 will start with a burst of diplomatic activity, yet the conflict’s structure sets the limits on future deals as it does on military breakthroughs.
By contrast, the situation in the Middle East has been much more dynamic, so it was a challenge to keep up with events never mind attempting to anticipate them in advance. The most radical shift was the weakening of the Iranian ‘axis of resistance’, culminating in the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, to the point that questions can now be raised about the future of the regime in Teheran. Given Hamas’s dependence on Iran’s support, and the battering it took from Israel, it also finished the year much weakened, with all its senior leadership having to be replaced, although it still held onto Israeli hostages and had not relinquished control of Gaza.
In my own analyses of the situation during 2024 I focused at first largely on the violence in Gaza while seeking to put that in a wider Middle Eastern context, noting the importance of Saudi Arabia as well as Iran. But Turkey did not get a mention, and while it now seems obvious that a combination of Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine and the steady degradation of Hizballah in Lebanon would affect Assad’s position in Syria, I didn’t pick up on that. Even if I had I don’t think I would have predicted just how rapid his fall would be, although this is an important reminder that regimes that appear to be stable on the surface can turn out to be very brittle. By way of mitigation, Assad himself had clearly not noticed the vulnerability of his regime.
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