Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was a “humiliation” not just for the deposed president himself, but for the Russian and Iranian regimes who supported him.
No decision has yet been made on whether the UK government will remove Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group that toppled the old regime, from a list of banned terrorist groups, said the BBC. But with the Middle East facing a moment of reckoning, it is not just Britain that is scrambling to adjust to the new post-Assad era.
Russia
The fall of Assad is undoubtedly a significant “blow to Russia’s prestige”, said the BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg. It will also have wider strategic and military consequences for Moscow.
In return for its support in shoring up the regime during the decade-long civil war, Syrian authorities awarded Russia 49-year leases on the air base in Hmeimim and naval base in Tartous, giving Moscow an “important foothold in the eastern Mediterranean”.
The liberation of Damascus “reflects a likely catastrophic loss of Russia’s significant investment in the Assad regime”, said R. Clarke Cooper, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Losing the two military bases would “damage Moscow’s ability to manoeuvre in Africa and the Mediterranean”, which may in turn “have a strategic impact on Russian influence across the world”.
Iran
Assad’s fall may have come as a shock to the international community, but perhaps not its closest ally in the Middle East. Iran had “lost faith” in Assad well before his fall from power, and had refused to send more forces to support his faltering regime, said the Financial Times.
Like Moscow, Tehran has been quick to open up a “direct line of communication” with rebels in Syria, said Reuters. But there is also “little doubt” it remains hugely concerned “about how the change of power in Damascus will affect Iran’s influence in Syria, the lynchpin of its regional clout”.
For many, the end of Assad marks the final nail in Iran’s much-vaunted “Axis of Resistance” that informally united Syria and armed groups like Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and a number of smaller groups in Iraq.
Syria’s leading rebel faction, the Sunni Islamist HTS, may not seem a “natural partner” for the Shi’ite Iranian regime, said Haaretz, but geopolitical interests, especially in the Middle East, are a “dynamic, flexible concept that depends on utility and necessity. And if Syria doesn’t find solutions to its needs elsewhere, Iran might well become the address.”
Israel
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed credit for the Syrian uprising that toppled Assad, calling it “the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran”.
He may have anticipated this outcome or at least hoped for it, David Rigoulet-Roze, from the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, told France 24, but it does not come without significant risks for Israel.
The Economist said that, until last week, Israel’s “long-standing strategy had been to rely on Assad to maintain the tense peace on the border and not to allow Syria to become another launching-pad for attacks on Israel”.
Now that he is gone, “Israel’s main concern, aside from the regime’s strategic weapons falling into hostile hands, is chaos in Syria that would allow organisations affiliated with Iran to launch rockets and drones”.
Sensing both a threat and an opportunity, Israel has wasted little time protecting its strategic interests. It has launched hundreds of air strikes on locations throughout Syria, destroying what Israeli military officials said were “strategic warehouses” containing chemical weapons as well as long-range missiles and anti-aircraft systems.
Israeli troops have also seized more territory in a buffer zone near the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, a move the UN said on Monday constituted a violation of a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria.
Turkey
If Russia and Iran have seen their influence diminished by the events of the past week then Turkey is the “main winner”, said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, from Princeton University, in Middle East Eye.
Turkey has heavily backed HTS, which looks set to play a major role in any future Syrian government. With Assad finally gone, Ankara “may hope to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey, exert more effective control over the Kurds and strengthen its role in the Palestinian issue, as well as cement alliances with like-minded groups in the region”, said Mousavian.
The transition of power in Damascus is “set to reshape the balance of power in the region”, said The Telegraph, with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “probably emerging as a major beneficiary”.