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David Adesnik, director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), focusing on Syria and Iran, spoke to a June 12th Middle East Forum Webinar (video) in an interview with Cliff Smith, director of the Middle East Forum’s Washington Project. They discussed the ongoing process by a number of governments of normalizing relations with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The dictator is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians and the displacement of millions during the civil war. The following is a summary of Adesnik’s comments:
In his recent Washington Post op-ed, Adesnik wrote that, instead of isolating the Syrian regime, the Biden administration is encouraging “Assad’s diplomatic rehabilitation” behind the scenes. Administration staffers at the National Security Council (NSC), who believe sanctions do not work, are advocating this position. Rather than enforce sanctions to deter Arab Gulf States and others from doing business with Assad as stipulated in the bipartisan Caesar Syria Civilian Human Protection Act of 2019 (the Caesar Act), the council has pivoted to engaging with the Assad regime.
The push behind the NSC’s policy shift is Jordan, which is eager to include Syria in a regional energy deal with Lebanon, Egypt, and its silent partner, Israel. Jordan needs a buyer for its surplus electricity, and Syria is on the “geographic route” to Lebanon, which is in the throes of an economic crisis and a failed energy grid. In addition, with over a million Syrian refugees in its country, Jordan would like to see many of them repatriated to Syria. Egypt, another regional partner, buys gas from Israel, [converts it to LNG, or liquefied natural gas] and re-exports it. Despite proclamations by the Biden administration that Assad remain a “pariah” until he is “held accountable” and a political solution emerges, it is now “getting out of the way for the Arabs to do the normalizing” and reduce pressure in the region.
Absent the administration’s plausible explanation as to why the proposed energy deal was exempt from the Caesar Act’s sanctions, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) welcomed Assad at the recent Arab League summit in Riyadh. Although a bipartisan congressional bill was recently introduced to strengthen preexisting sanctions on Syria, the NSC and the State Department chose “economically irrelevant targets” to avoid undermining their vision that working with Assad is the only way to resolve the political crisis in Syria. Countering that vision, Assad sees any compromise as a reason to “double down” on brutality.
Assad has survived due to Russian air support and Iranian oil. To maintain control on the ground, Hezbollah and Iranian-supplied militias have replaced the “broken” Syrian Arab Army. Assad controls sixty percent of Syrian territory and fifty to sixty percent of the population. While his “pyrrhic victory” in the civil war has seen fewer people dying in reduced military operations, Syria’s economy is “shattered,” and Assad’s control of territory is largely based on deals with former insurgents. Moreover, Assad is ineffective at repelling ISIS-launched attacks against the Syrian Arab forces and militias in the more remote areas under his control.
In 2011, the “uniform authoritarian rule” in Syria at least offered a modicum of stability. However, the devastation caused by the civil war destabilized the country, and the billions allotted specifically for humanitarian aid provided by the US and Europe to sustain the people of Syria in dire straits is a “farce.” Tens of millions in aid is diverted by Assad, some for reconstruction of electrical and gas facilities, but much of it for the dictator’s own priorities. For now, the Biden administration is maintaining U.S. troops in northeast Syria, but the people residing there fear a U.S. pullout at some point as Assad’s normalization process accelerates. The northwest enclave, which comprises some four million people under the control of Turkish-supported Sunni Arab rebels, is dependent on aid. Al Qaeda, still active in several places, is another danger in a Syria that is increasingly under “a broken rule with militias and . . . warlords . . . in charge.”
Instead of isolating the Syrian regime, the Biden administration is encouraging “Assad’s diplomatic rehabilitation” behind the scenes.
Turkey’s position regarding Syria depends on domestic politics. With his Muslim Brotherhood background, President Erdoğan is supportive of the Syrian jihadis and is sympathetic to Assad’s victims. However, Turkey’s secular mainstream population is resentful of the three million Syrians in the country, whom they consider a drain on government resources and competition for jobs. Vulnerable to his citizens’ disapproval of his Syrian refugee policy and seeking to placate them, Erdoğan went through the motions of holding ministerial meetings with the Syrian dictator. Even though Erdoğan was formerly vocal about ousting the secularist Assad, the Turkish president instead suggested a deal to return a million refugees to Syria.
Turkey has had a “historic rivalry” with Iran, but when it comes to creating problems for the U.S., it sets aside its differences with the regime. Iran’s support for Assad has greater implications for conflict in the region. Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, is animated by its “mission is to destroy Israel,” but is content to “take its time” doing so. In the meantime, Israel is wary of precision-guided munitions being shipped across Syria to Lebanon, where Hezbollah is building up its capability. During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into Israel’s densely populated northern cities. Even though the rockets were imprecise “dumb weapons,” Hezbollah damaged infrastructure and caused more than a hundred Israeli deaths in its thirty-four-day war against the Jewish State.
Syria’s economy is “shattered,” and Assad’s control of territory is largely based on deals with former insurgents.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) now engage in a “war between wars” to maintain deterrence with Hezbollah, but as a result of the 2006 war, there is a higher risk of escalation. If Hezbollah receives even several hundred of the precision-guided rockets, Israel might act preemptively. If proven to be connected to Hezbollah, a recent roadside bombing in the Israeli city of Megiddo would trigger an Israeli retaliation. Israel could effectively target a Hezbollah facility in Syria without risking escalation because “hundreds of airstrikes” it launched against Syria as part of the ongoing gray-zone conflict prompted no “meaningful response” from Assad.
Rather than the Biden administration’s approach, Adesnik prefers a policy of “maximum pressure” on Syria. That approach proved effective in 2020 when the Trump administration applied such pressure to Iran and saw its reserves drop precipitously. Assad is part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” which has sown chaos across the region. Instead of prioritizing negotiations with Iran for a nuclear deal, “stepping up sanctions and other measures” against the regime “should be an integral supporting pillar” of U.S. policy — not only towards Iran, but also “vis-à-vis” Syria.
