Assad’s Downfall Is An Opportunity For Donald Trump

The stunning fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday has completely changed the dynamics of the Middle East, explains Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Assad, says Landis, “didn’t appreciate the weakness of his own situation. And then, of course, once Israel destroyed Hezbollah’s leadership and pinned Iran’s ears back, he was left naked.”

The new nominal Syrian leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a radical Islamist who once fought alongside al Qaeda against the Americans in Iraq. But he’s since dramatically moderated his views, says Landis, who spent more than 14 years living in the Middle East and is the author of the forthcoming book, Syria at Independence: Nationalism, Leadership, and Failure of Republicanism. And Landis says that President-elect Donald Trump has an opportunity to find ways of working with Jolani to gain leverage against Iran and Russia. “America has wanted a Sunni-led state in Damascus in order to hurt Iran. And Russia. And it’s now got it, right? So you know — why bite the hand that you wanted it now?”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What brought on the sudden collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian president?

Well, it’s taken 14 years, but the fight had gone out of the Syrian army. Soldiers weren’t getting paid. Officers were making $30 a month, enlisted men $10 a month. In order to feed their families officers were letting many of their soldiers go home, and then they weren’t even collecting the $10 a month. There was no money. Syria was bankrupt. It was also bankrupt politically and couldn’t offer Syrians any sort of a brighter future.

The U.N. said earlier this year that 90 percent of Syrians were living below the poverty line, and food aid was fast disappearing.

Much of Syria’s wealth, some 40 percent of its government receipts before the revolution, came from its oil and gas wells. Syria doesn’t have a lot of oil, but it has enough oil for its own consumption, and that is key because today it doesn’t control it, and that means that there’s only an hour or two of electricity for most homes in Syria a day. It means that in wintertime, schools are freezing and people are freezing in their apartments. It’s a very bad situation.

Those wells are mostly owned by the United States today, and they’re very seriously run down, and not producing what they should be producing. So getting foreign companies in to rebuild them and to revive this entire oil industry is going to be key to the Syrian government, and that means a tug of war in the United States. And there is really no excuse for the United States to own those now. They couldn’t give them up before because they were denying them, theoretically, to ISIS, but also to Russia and Iran, which are enemies of the United States. But this government of Syria today is no longer an enemy of the United States, so there is no legal pretext for holding on to these oil wells.

But the leading rebel group that just took Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is a radical Islamist group and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, once fought with al Qaeda in Iraq against the Americans — though he’s since broken with the extremists publicly. So is it accurate to say that they’re not going to be an enemy of the United States?

Well, that’s what obviously the United States is going to determine. Jolani has made it very clear that there’s no place for extremism in Syria. He said he wants to be friends with everybody, and Syria’s only enemies are Iran and Hezbollah and Assad. So he’s clearly saying all the right things, and yes, the United States can say, ‘I don’t believe you,’ which it will do for some time, and it’ll try to keep all this for leverage and to justify sanctions on him and his government, to try to prevent it from rebuilding and keeping it poor. But if Jolani doesn’t declare war on Washington and says that he’s trying to build a government and feed people so that they can come home and refugees can return, the United States is going to look bad if it doesn’t come to terms with that. And Jolani has already been reaching out to the American government, from what I’ve heard from people in Washington. And so they’re going to have to engage with him and take the measure of him and his new government, but they’re going to have to act rather swiftly on this, because the entire Arab world and larger world is going to want to give this new government the benefit of the doubt.

Is he not, though, still on the U.S. terrorist list? I think there’s a big price on his head.

There is a big price on his head, and there are many people in Washington who are working to get him off the terrorist list. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has a number of people who’ve been arguing quite vociferously that Washington should take another look at him, and he’s moderated, and that he’s done many good things.

Can you talk more about how you think Jolani and HTS evolved ideologically? For example, when the Taliban took power in Afghanistan they also made noises of moderation, about wanting to engage, but they’re still a radical Islamist group. And during the time HTS ruled over the city of Idlib, its base, it was known for its brutal tactics, including sometimes torture.

True, he didn’t have a democratic government. There was no democracy in Idlib. Of course, it was a strange situation with tons of refugees, but he hasn’t talked about democracy in any way, shape or form, and one of the biggest U.S. demands under Assad was U.N. Resolution 2254, which calls for a democratic transition in Syria. Biden even mentioned it in his most recent speech today. So clearly Washington is holding that up as an expectation. But Jolani is much less dogmatic than, say, the Iranians, and he’s shown his flexibility and ability to try to woo Syrian minorities and foreign countries.

You don’t think we should fear that Syria will now be a haven for more radicalism, for al Qaeda, for the rebirth of ISIS? Even if it is true that, as you say, Jolani is making the right noises, we don’t really know what he intends.

We don’t. But you know, one can imagine that the legitimacy will go out of ISIS, because with Islamist rulers taking over in Damascus, there is no longer justification for fight against the unbelieving Shiites. And your average Syrian young person is not going to look at Jolani and think, ‘Oh, he’s an unbeliever,’ right? And so Jolani is going to have to move against ISIS as quickly as he can in order to reassure the West. And that’s going to be a big test for him.

Give us a little more history on how the U.S. came to control Syria’s oil and gas.

It’s because ISIS controlled it along the Euphrates River where most of the big oil and gas wells are. And the United States bombed it and then took it over. … And that’s what it uses to fund the Kurdish militias in the northeast.

The United States has dithered a long time over Syria since the Arab Spring began in 2011. Barack Obama didn’t want to give too much aid to the Syrian rebels because he feared the possibility of an Islamist takeover just like this one. At the same time, the U.S. was opposed to Assad. So it appeared to be a policy of doing nothing, and into that vacuum, if you will, Russia stepped in 2015. Could you talk about how this evolved?

I think the CIA was put into a very difficult position in Syria because President Obama, on the one hand, wanted Assad to step aside — but at the same time, he didn’t want the Syrian army to be destroyed. So he gave the CIA a horrible brief, which was to get rid of Assad without destroying the Syrian army. And that proved impossible for the United States, because the top 40 generals in the Syrian army were all Alawites [the minority Shiite sect of the Assad family]. And they weren’t going to dump this Alawite-led government and allow for some Sunni rebels to be running the place, because they would all be driven from their jobs — as they will be in the next few weeks. And once the rebels increasingly became dominated by al Qaeda and ISIS, America got spooked, and they turned away from the entire task of overthrowing Assad. So it was a terrible choice and that’s why Russia stepped in.

But the Americans may have been secretly relieved that Russia stepped in because it meant keeping Assad’s army from collapsing and being overthrown. Obama’s first words [after Russia’s intervention] were that the U.S. is not going to go to war with Russia for Syria, and then [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and [Secretary of State John] Kerry began to work on what they called de-confliction, which was dividing Syria between them. And America took everything north and east of the Euphrates River and Russia got everything else. And of course, Turkey jumped in and decided they didn’t want to let Russia and Assad reconquer everything. So they created a buffer zone in Idlib and northern Aleppo province for themselves, in which these militias [like HTS] took refuge.

Did Assad fall because he was simply continuing to rely far too much on Iran and Russia?

Absolutely. And he was arrogant. He didn’t appreciate the weakness of his own situation. And then, of course, once Israel destroyed Hezbollah’s leadership and pinned Iran’s years back, he was left naked.

Wasn’t Russia’s lack of support also decisive since it was so tied down in Ukraine?

I think it’s all three. I think Israel really changed the balance of power in the region, and that’s why the rebels were champing at the bit. They wanted to take advantage of that incredible blow to Hezbollah, because Hezbollah had played such an important part in retaking Aleppo. But of course, Russia no longer provided support with its air force. So all three of those factors were key. And Assad’s economic support disappeared as well.

Give us the larger picture of what this means for the Middle East, especially in terms of how weakened Iran has become.

This is a big blow for Iran. Hezbollah has been decimated, and it looks like the loss of Syria means that Iran will not be able to rebuild Hezbollah. (According to Landis, Hezbollah relied on Syria for the overland transit of weapons. -Ed.) That entire argument that Hezbollah would serve as a deterrent to Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities is now gone. Yeah, there is no deterrent. Israel can attack Iran’s nuclear facilities at will. And undoubtedly, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is is trying to figure out whether Trump will play ball with him on that. But Iran still has a lot of capabilities, putting its own satellites in space, and it’s doing some very sophisticated things. So counting Iran out would be a big mistake.

And of course, Russia has lost.

This is a major, major loss for Russia’s foreign policy, because in the past, we’ve seen that Israel was one of the major suppliers of the Georgian state for its military stuff. And when Russia challenged Israel and said, ‘Don’t do it, or I’m going to give the Syrians sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles,’ Netanyahu agreed not to supply the Georgians. For the same reason Israel has been quite deferential to Russia on Ukrainian issues, because they didn’t want Russia to help Assad on the Israeli issue. So that was important leverage, along with the Russian port on the Mediterranean, and all those things are gone now.

What should be the policy of incoming President Trump, both toward Syria but more broadly toward the Middle East?

Well, I think a new page has turned. The United States has been against Assad primarily because Assad was an ally of Iran and Russia, and today, the new Syria is no longer an ally of Russia or Iran. We don’t know who is going to be an ally of Syria right now, other than Turkey, right? But it is a Sunni state for the first time in 54 years. And that’s significant. America has wanted a Sunni-led state in Damascus in order to hurt Iran. And Russia. And it’s now got it, right? So you know — why bite the hand that you wanted it now? Yes, they’re more Islamist than Washington would prefer to have. But that’s the reality of the Middle East.