Russia and Iran pledge support for Syria’s Assad against advancing rebels

CAIRO — Syrian President Bashar Assad’s staunchest allies, Russia and Iran, pledged unconditional support to his government Monday, sending warplanes and voicing diplomatic support as his forces attempted to repel a startling rebel advance in his country’s northwest.

Russian and Syrian fighter jets were striking targets across territory seized by rebels in northwestern Syria on Monday, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes had killed civilians and fighters.

Yet the rebels appeared to continue their advance through Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, and the surrounding areas, battling pro-Assad forces to capture more territory in Hama province in western Syria.

Russian and Iranian officials stood by Assad in a flurry of statements, phone calls and public appearances Monday, suggesting they would continue to prop him up with military and diplomatic aid, as they have done since the Syrian civil war first threatened his autocratic rule in 2011.

But it remains to be seen if they can back up that rhetoric by halting the rebel advance, especially since neither have committed to sending ground troops to shore up Assad. Just the fact that the rebels were able to seize a large expanse of government-held territory in a few days showed weaknesses in the partnership that had helped Assad survive years of conflict.

In a call between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, the two leaders expressed “unconditional support” for Syria’s government, calling the rebel offensive a “large-scale aggression by terrorist groups and gangs,” according to a statement from the Kremlin’s press office.

Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure as well as rebel targets in Syria helped turn the tide of the war in Assad’s favor nearly a decade ago. But Moscow has been preoccupied by its invasion of Ukraine.

Iran and the militia it backs in Lebanon, Hezbollah, both supplied fighters to bolster Syria’s military. But they have taken a series of body blows from Israel during the regionwide conflict of the past year. Hezbollah’s leadership is decimated and its forces battered after its most recent war with Israel, which ended with a cease-fire last week.

Still, Assad’s backers appeared to be mobilizing to help. Several thousand fighters from such groups had already been stationed along the Iraq-Syria border, according to a senior Iraqi security official who declined to be named to discuss a sensitive matter, and according to members of three armed factions. All three groups said there were more forces ready to come to Assad’s defense if the rebel offensive advanced further.

Russia, which has warplanes stationed at a base in Syria, continued pounding territory captured by the rebels with airstrikes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian and Russian planes had struck targets across the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib and Hama. It said at least 13 civilians had been killed in one strike near the city of Idlib, including eight children, and dozens of others injured; in another, Russian warplanes killed four people, including two civilians, in Aleppo, it said.

United Nations-backed humanitarian groups have been forced to largely suspend their operations in the parts of Syria affected by the fighting, according to U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

The renewed conflict was complicating matters for another group opposed to Assad: Kurdish fighters who had held parts of Aleppo province and who rebel officials said Monday were evacuating the area by bus.

Viewed by Turkey as a historical enemy, and too weak to take on the Syrian rebels leading the advance, analysts said, the Kurdish fighters had little choice but to take the rebel leadership’s offer of safe passage to northeastern Syria, where the United States has partnered with their commanders in the fight against the Islamic State group for much of the last decade.

The Observatory said one of the strikes Monday had hit a camp for displaced people in northern Idlib. The White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group that said it had responded to the strike, said it had recovered the bodies of five children and two women and taken 12 more for medical treatment.

The rebels responded with at least one drone strike, including one on a group of military officials in northern Hama, according to rebel officials. A rebel spokesperson who gave his name as Ali al-Rifai said one of those targeted was Maj. Gen. Suhail al-Hassan, a special forces commander who became notorious among the Syrian opposition for his role in overseeing the bombing of civilian areas. It was unclear if al-Hassan, who is subject to U.S. sanctions, survived.

The New York Times could not independently verify the information from either side.

Russia and Iran, along with Syria’s government, have long painted the rebels as terrorists, and their public statements Monday were little different.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, visited Damascus, Syria, on Sunday to convey support for Assad in the fight against “the dangers posed by terrorists,” a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.

Araghchi then went to Ankara, Turkey’s capital, where he said in a Monday news conference with his Turkish counterpart that Iran would “provide any support deemed necessary to eliminate the infidels,” IRNA, a state news agency, reported.

The group leading the current offensive is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was linked to the Islamic State and al-Qaida until breaking with both years ago. The group has tried to portray itself as more moderate in recent years, but is still considered a terrorist group by the United States.

Wariness of the group’s extremism leaves governments that once supported moderate rebels against Assad in a tricky spot, unable to endorse either side. The United States, Britain, France and Germany released a joint statement calling for civilians to be protected and for a political solution to the conflict.

Turkey, which analysts say tacitly cooperates with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and openly backs other rebel groups across its border in northern Syria, has more leverage in the conflict, and has often brokered cease-fires in parts of Syria along with Russia and Iran. Its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, called on Assad on Monday to negotiate with the opposition.

“The latest developments show once again that Damascus should reconcile with its own people and the legitimate opposition,” he said in Monday’s news conference with Araghchi, adding that Iran, Russia and Turkey would meet again to try to broker peace.

A negotiated political transition is also what the moderate opposition in exile has long pushed for, and the rebels’ startling gains appeared to reinvigorate those demands.

Though he does not speak for the rebels battling in Syria, an exiled opposition leader, Hadi al-Bahra, said at a news conference broadcast from his base in Istanbul that the offensive was supported by a population weary of crimes committed by Assad and his foreign backers.

Like the United States and its Western allies, al-Bahra demanded the implementation of the stalled 2015 U.N. Security Council Resolution 2254, which lays out a road map for Syria’s political transition, starting with a cease-fire. It is, he said, “the only sustainable political solution in Syria.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company