Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect

by Reese Erlich

  The Iranian-Syrian marriage of convenience always had marital spats. During the mid-1980s Syria backed Amal in Lebanon while Iran favored Hezbollah. Syria sent troops to support the US-led Gulf War while Iran remained neutral. Ideologically the leaders of both countries remained far apart. Ayatollah Khomeini never invited Hafez al-Assad to Tehran because he was suspicious of the secular leader. Only in 2008, years after the deaths of both Khomeini and Assad, did Bashar al-Assad visit Tehran. Despite these differences, the two countries found unity in opposing the United States and its allies.

  Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian group Hamas developed what they called a “resistance front” to oppose US and Israeli policies, and they claimed some successes. It forced the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000 and repelled Israel's invasion of that country in 2006, according to Hossein Ruyvaran, a leader of the Society for Defense of the Palestinian Nation, an Iranian advocacy group based in Tehran. Today Iran is a key ally of Syria, he noted. “Iran is the pivot of this coalition,” he told me.7

  US policymakers worried about Iran's leading role in the resistance front. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman told the US Senate, “Today, Iran is training, arming, funding, aiding, and abetting the Assad regime and its atrocious crackdown on its own people. Iran has made it clear that it fears losing its closest ally and will stop at no cost, borne by both the Syrian and Iranian people, to prop up the Assad regime.”8

  At least US and Iranian leaders agree on something: Assad's downfall would tremendously weaken Iran's regional influence. From the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Iran worried that “if the Assad government fell, the replacement would have much stronger ties with the US government and Israeli government,” according to Professor Foad Izadi, an assistant professor at the University of Tehran's Faculty of World Studies. He told me, “that was the dilemma that Iran had.”9

  Tehran was generally pleased with the “resistance front” right up to the beginning of the Arab Spring. Iranian leaders don't talk a lot about it now, but they were pleased when the Arab Spring uprisings began. They called the Arab Spring an “Islamic Awakening” against corrupt, Western-backed, secular regimes. Iran hoped that conservative Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood would be more friendly to Iran than the old, pro-Western dictatorships. Tehran put out feelers to opposition groups in the Arab Spring countries. Professor Izadi told me that both Iran and Hezbollah understood that there were strong ideological differences between them and the Sunni opposition groups. Nevertheless, they hoped to establish friendly relations based on their common Islamic faith and opposition to the United States. “An ideal situation would be to have a [Sunni] religious government that is tolerant of Iran,” he said.10

  Izadi cited Hamas as an example of a Sunni group that cooperated with Iran, a relationship that cut across religious and ideological lines. “A group like Hamas, which is religious but friendly with Iran, is much better than a secular government,” he said. He admitted that there was a rather large problem with the analogy, however. Hamas, which had been allied closely with Damascus for years, broke relations and supported the Syrian uprising in 2011. Hamas closed its Damascus headquarters and decamped to Qatar (see chapter 9).

  So the Syrian uprising posed a major dilemma for Tehran from the very beginning. It couldn't abandon Assad, its closest Arab ally. But opposing the popular revolt against Assad would discredit Iran on the Arab street. “Iran was disinclined to be the benefactor of an Assad regime run amok in a time of democratic hope in the Middle East,” according to Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute in Washington.11

  During the initial months of the uprising, Iran met with Syrian opposition leaders and Assad to seek a political accord. Iranian government officials told Assad “it would be wise to hold free and fair elections,” said Professor Izadi. If Assad won, he would be the legitimate ruler. If he lost, the Baathists would be “a major political player like Hezbollah in Lebanon. You win the elections or become a strong opposition.” But, according to Izadi, Syrian leaders rejected that option. “They thought they could suppress the uprising.”12

  The Syrian opposition leaders also rejected the proposal for such elections because they trusted neither Assad nor Iran. Assad was never willing to share power, let alone resign, as demanded by the opposition. Efforts by Iranian leaders to mediate the dispute failed, and they threw their full support behind Assad. But it wasn't easy convincing the Arab street—even when the street came to Tehran.

  In February 2012 Iranian authorities held an “Islamic Awakening” conference in Tehran, flying in hundreds of activists from around the Middle East. Event organizers cheered on those rebellions they liked, but the Iranian leaders wouldn't allow discussion of the Syrian uprising, claiming it was a Western conspiracy. “We must be vigilant: the West is trying to foment sectarian conflict in our societies, as part of their goal of keeping Israel alive,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the conference. “Today Syria, tomorrow your country.”13

  But the efforts to isolate Syria's rebellion from the Arab Spring failed at the conference as it had on the ground. One young activist held up a sign reading “Syria?” and received enthusiastic applause, later followed by officially inspired boos.14 That incident reflected a worldwide debate whether to support or oppose Assad. There is also a debate about the role of religion in the civil war. Some analysts say the war pits the Sunni majority against the Alawite and Shia minority, reflecting a centuries-old religious antagonism. Others say the civil war is political, not religious. As I discovered during a 2013 trip to Tehran, however, both sides use religion to rally their followers and vilify the enemy.

  Sayed Mohammad Husseini sat behind the counter at a Tehran store selling religious CDs as he explained his support for Bashar al-Assad. “I support Shias all over the world, including the Shia leader Assad,” he told me with a smile.15 When informed that Assad is Alawite, he looked confused. Most Iranians are unfamiliar with the Alawite branch of Islam, which has virtually no presence in Iran. Alawites are a small but powerful minority in Syria that began as a split-off from Shia Islam centuries ago and revere some of the early Shia leaders. Upon hearing that, Husseini nodded his head. “That's good enough,” he said.

  Iranian leaders said they support Assad as a bulwark against Israel, the United States, and Sunni extremist rebels. Inside Iran, however, they rallied supporters such as Husseini with appeals to defend Shia Islam against what they refer to as takfiris, or impure Muslims. Many Iranians saw Syria's civil war as part of an attack on Shia throughout the region, according to Professor Izadi. Some deeply religious people see that “there are Salafis [extremist Sunnis] threatening to blow up the shrines,” he told me. “They don't know enough to realize that the Assad government is not a Shia government, and [is] actually secular.”16

  Other countries and political parties have lined up to support Assad or the rebels, reflecting the Sunni-Shia divide but also geopolitical interests. Shia leaders in Iraq, Hezbollah, and Iran support Assad, along with Orthodox Christian Russia. Sunnis in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar back the rebels, along with the non-Muslim United States.

  Iran and Hezbollah initially justified armed support for Assad by claiming to protect holy Shia shrines, an issue that resonates with Shia worldwide. For more than thirty years Iran had subsidized religious pilgrimages to the Sayyidah Zaynab shrine located just outside Damascus. The government provided pilgrims low-cost airfares and hotel accommodations.

  I visited Sayyidah Zaynab prior to the 2011 uprising. Its beautiful gold dome rose in the distance. Handmade inlaid tiles created intricate designs on the walls. On the day of my visit, hundreds of Shia pilgrims arrived from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. The women had to wear chadors, the large, black cloth that covers everything but the face. Fascinatingly enough, just outside, a young Syrian man sold sexy lingerie to the chador-clad women who were exiting the shrine. The English language packaging read Lady's Fashion Teddy. While S
hia Islam has strict prohibitions against nonmarital sex, married couples are allowed considerably more leeway. I asked the lingerie vendor why he sold his products outside a holy shrine. He looked at me incredulously. “To make money, of course.”17 And, of course, shopping for this and other more mundane items were only of minor concern compared to the religious importance of the shrine itself.

  The Sayyidah Zaynab shrine is said to hold the remains of Zaynab, a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad. The shrine is holy for all Muslims but particularly revered by the Shia because Zaynab was the sister of Imam Hussein, one of the founders of their branch of Islam, and because she called for rebellion against an unjust ruler. The Shia make pilgrimages to the shrine much as Catholics visit Lourdes or the Old City of Jerusalem.

  Sending troops to protect the Sayyidah Zaynab and other shrines rang true for many Shia. They well remember when, in 2006, Sunni extremists blew up the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, Iraq, located about eighty miles north of Baghdad. That bombing led to retaliatory attacks against Sunnis and initiated Iraq's sectarian strife. “From the beginning, we wanted to prevent another Samarra,” said Palestinian activist Ruyvaran. “The [Zaynab] shrine is very inspirational. Any disrespect to the shrine would cause conflict between Shia and Sunni. So Hezbollah protected it.”18

  The shrine is just a half-hour drive from central Damascus along the airport road. But on a 2013 trip to Damascus, I learned that almost no one visits the shrine these days, according to Fadi Burhan, a spokesperson for the Khomeini Academy at Sayyidah Zaynab. His academy is named in honor of the late ayatollah. Foreigners long ago stopped making the pilgrimage, and the airport road is often closed due to fighting, making the journey impossible even for Syrians. “A few local people visit us,” said Burhan somewhat sheepishly. Rebel mortar shells regularly hit the neighborhood near the shrine. Hezbollah and Syrian soldiers stand guard. “The rebels are shelling the Shia neighborhoods because they are loyal to the regime,” he explained.19

  Burhan represents a sector of Syrians who criticize the Assad government for being too soft on the rebels. He said Assad pursued a correct strategy fighting “terrorist” rebels but made tactical errors. “The government hasn't hit hard enough,” he asserted. “It should have used an iron fist against the terrorists in the beginning.”

  In mid-2013, the government formed a committee to seek a negotiated settlement with select opposition groups. The rebels said the Committee of Reconciliation was useless, but Burhan claimed it was too conciliatory. “When the army besieges an area and wants to strike hard, some intermediaries from the Committee of Reconciliation intervene and prevent the attack on the terrorists,” he said.

  That's certainly not the view of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in major cities, cut off from food, water, and medical care by the Syrian army. And by 2013 it became clear that the army couldn't win the civil war without outside troops. Assad had a large army designed for conventional war, but it proved far less capable at the block-by-block fighting of counterinsurgency war. An estimated six thousand to eight thousand Hezbollah militants have fought in Syria as of mid-2013, according to Palestinian activist Ruyvaran, although exact figures are a closely guarded secret. Hezbollah played a crucial role in the Syrian army's victory in June 2013 in the western Syrian town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border. The army's brutal tactics shocked even Hezbollah, as noted in chapter 6.

  Hezbollah and Iran had stepped up their intervention because the Assad regime faced a series of military setbacks. By 2012 rebels had seized control of Syria's northern provinces. In July of that year, a Free Syrian Army bomb at an intelligence headquarters assassinated Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, former defense minister Hassan Turkmani, and Assef Shawkat, Assad's brother-in-law and a high-ranking security official. The Syrian army and security services set up checkpoints throughout Damascus.

  Iran sent hundreds of specialists in urban warfare and intelligence gathering to Syria. Revolutionary Guard leaders openly boasted about training pro-Assad militias, also known as shabiha. Revolutionary Guard major general Mohammad Ali Jafari said, “It is an honor for the Islamic Republic of Iran to share its experience and provide any kind of consultation to help defend Syria.”20

  The Revolutionary Guard also set up a military camp outside Tehran that mainly trained pro-Assad Alawites but also Lebanese Shia from Hezbollah. Fighters were divided into groups of sixty to get training as snipers, heavy machine gun operators, and other specialties. The Wall Street Journal reported that fighters got much better training in Tehran than from the Syrians. “Before I could only hit targets 50 percent of the time, now I can hit a target around 90 percent of the time,” said one trainee quoted by the Journal.21

  But the effectiveness of the training came into doubt when the civilian militias returned to Syria. They were supposed to hold towns after the army recaptured them from the rebels. But numerous sources indicate that the militias are undisciplined, unaccountable, and engage in criminal activities such as kidnapping for ransom (see chapter 6). The Syrian government tried on several occasions to reorganize the militias but failed each time to make them an effective force.

  While Tehran acknowledged sending military advisors to Syria, it denied providing combat troops. The military advisers were legal under terms of a long-standing treaty, according to Palestinian activist Ruyvaran, who lives in Tehran. “If we had combat troops, the dead would have come home. There have been no funerals.” But Western sources argued that Iran had significantly boosted the Revolutionary Guard presence, including using some as combat troops. The Wall Street Journal reported that Free Syrian Army leaders had collected IDs of Iranian soldiers killed in combat.22

  Tehran also stepped up economic ties with Syria in several strategic sectors. Even while smarting from US sanctions, the Iranian Central Bank offered Damascus a $3.6 billion line of credit to buy Iranian oil. And both countries agreed to build the Iran-Iraq-Syria Friendship natural-gas pipeline that may run 3,500 miles from Iran to the Mediterranean coast in Lebanon. Construction of the pipeline was disrupted by the civil war.23

  This stepped-up military and economic assistance to Syria caused controversy inside Iran. Many of the activists of the Iranian Green Movement sympathized with Syria's opposition in the early days of the uprising. So they opposed Iran's strong support of Assad. But they soured on the armed rebellion as extremist Islamist groups gained power, according to journalist and political activist Abbas Abdi. He helped lead the 1979 student takeover of the US embassy in Tehran and later became a leader in Iran's reform movement. Abdi described himself as a reformer and not part of the banned Green Movement. Iran's opposition is “confused because the rebels have long beards and Assad's supporters wear fashionable clothes,” said Abdi with a chuckle.24

  But Iran's leaders also faced a dilemma. Assad failed to win a military victory and used increasingly brutal tactics. In June 2013, Iranians elected a relatively moderate president, Hassan Rouhani. Some thought he would shift Syria policy. The issue came to a head when some important Iranian leaders criticized the Syrian regime in late August and early September 2013, after the chemical-weapons incident created a major international crisis.

  Iran's former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani gave a speech in which he admitted, “The Syrian people have suffered much during the past two years. More than 100,000 were killed and seven to eight million have become displaced. Prisons are overflowing with people, and they have turned stadiums into prisons.” He became the first high-ranking Iranian to say Assad's government was responsible for that month's chemical-weapons attack that killed hundreds. “The people have suffered a chemical attack by their own government,” he said.25

  In September, Iran's new foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also criticized Assad, a first for a sitting government official. “We believe that the government in Syria has made grave mistakes that have, unfortunately, paved the way for the situation in the country to be abused,” Zarif told a Tehran publication.26 But did Iran
ian policy on Syria actually change? First, we have to look at the wider context of Iran's relations with the United States and the West.

  Successive US administrations have considered Iran a major threat to America's national interests. The pro-US government of the Shah had safeguarded US oil companies, allied with Israel, and acted as a local gendarme against regional anti-imperialist rebellions. The 1979 revolution brought to power religious autocrats opposed to US imperialism and to Communism, men who hoped to spread their version of radical Islam.

  At first the US denounced Iran for fomenting “terrorism,” referring to such groups as Hezbollah. But by the 1990s the United States and Israel came up with an even more frightening line of attack. They insisted that Iran was about to develop a nuclear bomb. In 1995 a “senior US official” said Iran was five years away from making a nuclear bomb. In 2006 Israeli intelligence agencies estimated Iran might be only one to three years away from having the bomb.27 Iran did secretly develop nuclear enrichment for power generation, but neither the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency nor US intelligence agencies say Iran currently has a nuclear-weapons program. Nevertheless, the United States, Israel, and some European countries remain suspicious because Iran insists on maintaining its nuclear-enrichment program.

  Both Washington and Tel Aviv insist that “all options,” including intense aerial bombardment, remain on the table to stop Iran's nuclear program. In reality, Iran would never launch an offensive military attack on Israel. It could have attacked that country with conventional rockets and bombers years ago. But such an attack would invite devastating retaliation by both the United States and Israel. Iranian rulers may be evil, but they aren't crazy. Washington and Tel Aviv's real concern is that if Iran ever did develop a nuclear capability, it would make a US or Israeli attack far more risky (see chapter 10).