PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Supreme Leader in Tehran, November 2015


One of the essential questions in Syria’s five-year conflict is whether Russia and Iran will maintain the alliance that is essential to President Assad’s survival.

The backing of the two countries has been vital to the Assad regime since 2012, and their coordinated interevention last autumn prevented the collapse of the Syrian military and a rebel advance to the doorstep of Damascus.

Yet that alliance has never been stable. Russia was ready for thousands of airstrikes to hold a defense line from Latakia to Homs to Damascus, while eroding the rebel positions in northwest Syria and along the Turkish border. However, Moscow has been far from certain that President Assad, rather than the regime, should be guaranteed his position in the long-term.

In contrast, Iran declared in November — possibly in response to the impression that Russia was distancing itself from Assad’s future — that the President’s future was a “red line”, and it has continued the declarations this spring.

Tensions between the two countries have been heightened in the past month by a series of rebel defeats of Iranian and Iranian-led forces south of Aleppo city. Iranian officials blame the Russians for failure to provide effective air support, while Moscow is casting doubt on the quality of Iran’s commanders.

So will Russia and Iran part ways over Assad? Writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Aron Lund concludes that, while the situation is difficult, it is better for the two to hang together than to hang separately:

Both Iran and Russia have ample reason to worry about being mired in an intractable conflict. Assad’s government is weak and dysfunctional, and at this point neither he nor his allies seem to have a clear endgame in mind….

But neither do their opponents, whose clients in Syria are by any measure much less effective and dependable than the Syrian army. And if Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States, France, and others, haven’t backed down despite Assad’s recent gains, then there is surely no reason to expect the Iranian-Russian pact to fall apart as long as Moscow and Tehran’s position is improving. Indeed, rather than focusing on the differences between Russia and Iran, which are real but would be mutually damaging to act upon, it seems more meaningful to try to identify their shared interests in Syria, because these are likely to be pursued aggressively.

It’s a shrewd reading, but notice the assumption “as long as Moscow and Tehran’s position is improving”. Given that Iran’s position has dramatically failed to improve south of Aleppo — with a further rebel advance on Friday, inflicting more casualties on Tehran’s troops and militias — can that assumption be maintained?


Stand Together or Fall Apart: The Russian-Iranian Alliance in Syria
Aron Lund

When Western policymakers and analysts seek to understand the role of Iran and Russia in supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the focus is typically on their differences. However, this way of looking at it may be misleading. Russia and Iran are now trapped in a situation of mutual dependence where both stand to lose if the three-way pact between Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus should fall apart. So far, their collaboration has proven effective and they certainly have enough in common to justify a continued aggressive pursuit of joint interests.

To be sure, differences exist. The war’s outcome is indisputably more important for Iran. Tehran views the Syrian government as crucial to its regional security structure, having nurtured a close alliance with the Assad family and its Alawite-dominated security apparatus for over three decades. Ali Akbar Velayati, who advises Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on foreign policy, has repeatedly referred to Assad as a “red line” for Iran, stressing that “it is none of the Americans’ business to say anything in this regard.” Since 2011, Iran has worked assiduously to shore up its ally, mobilizing thousands of Lebanese, Iraqi, and Afghan Shia volunteers to fight in Syria. When the Russian Air Force intervened in autumn 2015, Tehran ramped up its presence by sending Iranian special forces to the country.

Russia’s approach to Syria is slightly different. It seeks to preserve what is left of the Syrian state over which Assad presides, to prevent Western-backed regime change of the kind so abhorred in Moscow, and to leverage the conflict in its relations with the United States. But it is ultimately a war of choice. While President Vladimir Putin treats Syria as an important issue, it is hardly fundamental for Russia’s national security in the same way that it is for Iran.

There are also slight nuances in how Russians and Iranians approach Assad’s presidency. Iran is explicitly committed to keeping Assad in power. The Kremlin refers to Assad as “the only legitimate president of Syria” and clearly seeks to save his regime. However, it prefers to portray its intervention in terms of defending government institutions and regional stability. “Assad is not an ally for us. Yes, we support him in the fight against terror and in preserving the Syrian state,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in early May. “But he is not an ally in the sense Turkey is an ally for the United States.”

Putin places great value on engaging the United States in negotiations, with the current Geneva III peace process being a by-product of American-Russian diplomacy. Moscow has repeatedly pushed Assad to participate in these talks despite his objections to the UN-endorsed principle of a political transition in Syria. According to Western diplomats, Moscow has even said—sincerely or not—that it could envision a peace process that ends with Assad resigning from the presidency.

With the advent of the Geneva talks and a truce brokered by the United States and Russia last February, these differences appeared to grow more salient. While Iran seems only mildly interested in the diplomatic process, Moscow clearly wants Assad to be more flexible. The Syrian government has conceded nothing in Geneva and Assad continues to block food and medicine from reaching rebel-held cities, brushing off Russian and American demands for humanitarian access. This is not making it any easier for Putin to keep his diplomatic game going.

Some Western diplomats now say that their Russian colleagues are becoming visibly frustrated with the Syrian ruler’s intransigence — and with Iran’s habit of nudging Assad back to the battlefield — when the Russians want him to play politics.

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