Research & Commentary Results

Officials in Tehran have a lot to worry about. But they are particularly irked at the speed by which Asian states have dropped Iran as a trading partner. Iran had hoped that the East would save the country’s economy from the barrage of sanctions enacted by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. In early 2018, at a time when Trump and his team were about to unveil the most punishing sanctions regime ever imposed on a country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei explicitly urged Tehran to look east for trading partners.

Despite strong religious and cultural ties and a long shared border, Iran has a somewhat complicated relationship with Afghanistan. Since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan some four decades ago, Iran’s attempts to preserve its interests in conflict-ridden Afghanistan have not received much attention from the outside world, but it remains one of the most important neighboring countries for Tehran’s foreign policy.

On June 20 a bus carrying soldiers from the Eighth Brigade of the Fifth Corps, travelling from Latakia to Busra al-Sham, hit a roadside IED near the town of Kahil in eastern Daraa, leaving nine dead and 13 injured. The following day, the funeral for the nine soldiers who died in the IED attack quickly turned into the largest protest Daraa has seen since 2018, including both Eighth Brigade fighters and hundreds of civilians from several nearby areas.

While the regime and its allies have cast the current crisis as the result of Western sanctions, Syria’s economic troubles are largely due to the regime’s “Assad or we burn the country” policies.

After a brief but deadly Turkish offensive in Idlib, a new phase of the Syria war began on March 5 with the signing of a Turkish-Russian cease-fire deal. Reported deaths dropped drastically following the cease-fire, and this spring has been defined by the slow attrition of pro-regime forces due to the two ingoing insurgencies in south and central Syria and the two frozen frontlines in the northwest and northeast.

With an economy already on the brink of collapse and a shocking devaluation of the Syrian pound — hitting 3,175 pounds to the dollar earlier this month — the COVID-19 pandemic has come at an exceptionally dangerous time in Syria.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, music and dance have become increasingly common in Iran’s hospitals and on its streets. Long disallowed in public after the Islamic revolution of 1979, they have become both a source of support for Iranians during difficult times and a way of resisting the regime.

The administration hopes additional economic pressure will compel Damascus to take a series of political gestures, including releasing political prisoners and establishing an accountability process for the atrocities its forces committed.

Sam Dagher, Danny Makki and Karam Shaar join guest host Charles Lister to discuss the recent deterioration of Syria’s economy and what it means for the country, the Assad regime, and the rest of the region moving forward. As aggressive new US economic sanctions targeting the regime are set to go into effect in a few days, 85% of Syrians are in poverty and the country faces a wheat supply crisis.

When Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad started his regime, the Makhloufs became key allies. This alliance deepened with Bashar’s rise to power, and the Makhloufs became increasingly entrenched in the system until they became its economic pillar. The house of Assad was the political arm of the regime while the house of Makhlouf was the economic and financial arm. But then it all fell apart.

The U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue that will be launched this week provides an opportunity for the two sides to put their relations, as Iraqi President Dr. Barham Salih said last April, “in the right context.”

Charities are useful fronts for all sorts of activities in Syria, but above all perhaps, they are vehicles of control. The Assads have long understood that the biggest danger to their rule comes from within, from a civil society that rejects their governance — never more so than today.

The impact of COVID-19 on Iran-linked forces in Syria has provided Russia with an opportunity to expand its influence through its proxy forces, particularly in eastern Syria, as Iranian and pro-Iranian forces redeploy elsewhere in the country.

World leaders have long stressed the need to maintain Syria’s territorial integrity, but at the moment, such a goal is unrealistic. Syria first needs a transitional phase in which the country will be divided into three zones of foreign influence to allow for reconstruction, the return of refugees and IDPs, and a gradual process of reconciliation.

Since 2017, Iran has seen several waves of protests rooted in political, social, and, most importantly, economic grievances. In light of COVID and the post-pandemic fallout, there is every indication that unrest will continue to grow, and even accelerate. Until now, the regime’s coercive apparatus has had both the capacity and the willingness of its members to successfully suppress anti-regime unrest. But has COVID-19 changed this balance? What impact, if any, has the pandemic had on the regime’s security capacity?