For many Syrians, Iran is not an abstract regional player or a far-off ideological force. In Rizik Alabi’s sobering report [1], it is remembered as a country tied to siege, bombardment, displacement, and the long misery of Syria’s civil war. That memory, carried in cities, villages, and family histories, still shapes how many Syrians see Tehran today.
The article is built not around think tank jargon or official statements, but around lived memory. Syrians from the Damascus countryside, Aleppo, Daraa, and Idlib describe a bitterness forged during the worst years of the war, when Iran’s backing of the Assad regime was widely felt on the ground. For Ahmad, Iran became inseparable from daily suffering under siege. For Sara in Aleppo, even news of Iran facing troubles now stirs a private sense of relief, raw and uneasy, tied to what her city endured. Laila links her own displacement directly to the foreign forces she believes helped make that catastrophe possible.
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What gives the piece its force is that these voices are not talking like ideologues. They are talking like people who survived something and have not forgotten who they believe stood behind it. Many of those interviewed say their anger is less about theory than about what they lived through: the destruction of homes, the breakup of communities, the sight or rumor of Iranian-backed forces, and the sense that Syria became a stage for other powers’ ambitions.
Still, the story is not a simple anti-Iran chorus. Alabi shows that many Syrians also fear another regional war and want no fresh disaster layered onto the rubble of the last one. In Idlib, that mix of anger and dread comes through clearly: resentment toward Iran remains strong, but so does the conviction that civilians will once again pay the price for any new escalation.
That tension gives the article its real weight. Alabi captures a Syria still trying to step into a more stable future while carrying the emotional wreckage of the past. Read the full piece [1] for its human texture and for a clearer sense of how war memory still shapes Syrian political feeling.