Gaza War Offers Glimmer of Hope to Syria’s Marginalized Opposition

Syrian opposition figures and experts say Iran has been expanding its influence and activities in Syria and the time has come for Western countries and the United Nations to rein it in.

With Iraqi Shia militia and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moving towards Israel’s borders and drawing global attention to Iran’s regional “Resistance Axis,” some in Syria’s marginalized opposition see an unexpected opening for the end of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Others expect a repeat of previous cycles of Western attention and fatigue with an intractable and deadly conflict.

“Recognizing Iran and its tools as terrorists is a critical change for Syrians who have suffered so much from Iran and its proxies,” Abdul Aziz Ajini, co-founder of the National Salvation Front in Syria, told The Media Line in a telephone interview hours after Israeli jets crippled the main airports in Damascus and Aleppo.

The National Salvation Front is an opposition group aligned with Sunni Syrian army officers who defected after Assad ordered troops to fire on peaceful demonstrators during the aborted 2011 revolution. Since then, the front has grown to include political and military figures from across Syria’s ethnic and religious landscape, including former Alawite soldiers from the coastal villages close to the traditional stronghold of the Assad clan.

There is now an unprecedented chance for Israel and its Western allies to decapitate Hamas and Hizbullah and go for a solution to the conflict. Only then can a new Middle East be created.

“There is now an unprecedented chance for Israel and its Western allies to decapitate Hamas and Hizbullah and go for a solution to the conflict. Only then can a new Middle East be created,” Ajini said.

“Hamas does not represent the Palestinian nation, and Assad doesn’t represent the Syrian people. The Israeli airstrikes on Iranians in Syria are quite accurate. Damascus Airport hosts a base used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and [Israel] targets no civilians, so most Syrians support them. I hope they will do the same against Hamas.

“The problem is that large-scale airstrikes on civilians in Gaza build support for Hamas and Hizbullah.”

On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the deployment of the USS Eisenhower, the second American aircraft carrier dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean to deter “any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war.”

These ships will expand Israel’s radar picture of Syria and Lebanon and improve its ability to contend with Hizbullah’s long-range missiles.

As Israeli forces focus on the Gaza Strip, additional US assets can help with surveillance and reconnaissance on the increasingly active northern front.

“With the IGCRC and its proxies moving closer to Israel, the United States sending a second aircraft carrier is necessary. I believe that other allied countries will also do so because the war will not remain confined to Gaza,” Fahd al-Masri, president of the National Salvation Front and a former spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, told The Media Line.

Al-Masri is known for his multiple approaches to Israeli officials and the wider Israeli public and his engagement with the North American Syrian Jewish community.

His most recent initiative has been to enlist the front’s American members to lobby for congressional passage of a new “Iran Accountability Law” that would include measures to redirect Iran’s oil revenues “for the reconstruction of what has been destroyed by Iran in Syria and Israel.”

“I think that both the Syrian and Israeli peoples have the right to seize Iranian oil revenues for compensation to the victims of Tehran’s regional campaign of terror and displacement,” al-Masri said.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, for the past year, Turkish politics and anti-refugee sentiment have motivated Syrian opposition groups headquartered in Istanbul to relocate to Berlin and Paris.

But Ammar Khaff, executive director of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, an independent think tank based in Istanbul, has continued to work on building local governance and economic development in northwest Syria, where Turkey has held back the advances of Assad’s Iranian-backed forces and Russia’s air force.

Iran is now in the veins of economic activities, in the veins of civil society, of basic education, of higher education, and it is on the ground in Syria with scholarships and grants

Khaff, who has a doctorate in political science from UCLA and is a board member of the Syrian Forum USA, is currently working to gain accreditation for Idlib University, the first independent institution of higher education in Syria.

“Iran is now in the veins of economic activities, in the veins of civil society, of basic education, of higher education, and it is on the ground in Syria with scholarships and grants,” Khaff told The Media Line. He said one example is a $50 billion credit line extended by the Iranians to bolster Assad’s rule.

“The result is that now the region is in pain, but collectively, the United States, Europe, the [Persian] Gulf, haven’t given even 10% of that funding to the opposition groups,” he said.

“America can’t address this imbalance through a $2 million project that I might submit to the State Department.”

Khaff said the recent overtures towards Iran by the Saudis and the Emiratis resulted from a lack of seriousness in tackling Iran’s aggressive moves in the Gulf.

“Iran hit Aramco through its Houthi proxies. It’s one of the first things the Saudi officials who engage with us mention to me. The Gulf states felt betrayed,” he said.

Khaff emphasized his support for Palestinian national aspirations but said he often surprises fellow Arabs when asked if Israel or Iran is the most destabilizing force in the Middle East.

Iran has killed way more Syrians and detained and tortured more Syrians than the number of Palestinians injured and made homeless by the occupation

“You can’t occupy a land and just look the other way and say it’s going to be very stable,” he said, speaking of Israel.

“But if you want to compare Iran with Israel, we must acknowledge that Iran is way worse. Iran has killed way more Syrians and detained and tortured more Syrians than the number of Palestinians injured and made homeless by the occupation. I said that once on Jordanian television and haven’t been invited back since.”

Syrian opposition figures uniformly stress Iran’s role in destroying their country. They also lament the inability of Western powers to counter Russia’s decisive air support for Assad.

“Moscow’s increased involvement dates back to the 2015 meeting between Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow. The Iranian request provided a new option for Russia to project power just as the West began its sanctions against Putin over the annexation of Crimea,” Ayman Abdelnour, publisher of the opposition news portal All for Syria and President of Syrian Christians for Peace, told The Media Line.

Abdelnour said he fears the latest Gaza war provides cover for Russia and Assad to strike at Syrian civilians in the northwest Idlib governorate, where 2 million internally displaced refugees now make up two-thirds of the population.

On Friday, the Syrian Network for Human Rights released a report documenting 51 attacks by combined Assad and Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals in the northwest.

“Now, because of this Gaza war, no one is talking about the atrocities in Idlib, the economic implosion inside Syria, the worthlessness of the Syrian pound, and malnutrition. And no one in the Western media is covering the peaceful demonstration in Sweida [the majority Druze province in southern Syria bordering Jordan] and the popular demand for a decent standard of living,” Abdelnour said.

The US and EU should empower the Syrian opposition and make Arab allies push for a political solution as fast as possible. That will be the way to decrease Iranian influence in Syria.

He said accelerating a peaceful political solution for Syria under UN Resolution 2254 must remain the chief aim for the opposition, and ways must be found to implement it despite Russian veto power.

“The US and EU should empower the Syrian opposition and make Arab allies push for a political solution as fast as possible. That will be the way to decrease Iranian influence in Syria,” he said.

“It’s also time to separate the Iranian-backed gang oppressing the population and the government employees who now earn $15-a-month salaries. They don’t have food. They cannot even pay for public transport to go to their work. These civil servants should be empowered through the United Nations. You’d see a full-scale revolt against the Assad regime.”