Research & Commentary Results

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?

The Syrian economy is entering its most fragile phase yet in the country’s nine-year-long conflict. After being devastated by the fighting, constrained by biting Western sanctions, and ravaged by widespread corruption, it is now witnessing the sharpest rise in inflation in its history.

While Russia is currently struggling with the consequences of COVID-19 at home, its foreign policy projections suggest it is also bracing itself for the post-pandemic world.

Quickly attributing or blaming a country for a cyber incident without technical analysis, proof, and government officials willing to go on record only inflames an already tense situation.

The collapse of the OPEC+ deal and the diplomatic impasse in Syria reveal the intrinsic fragility of Russia’s gains in the Middle East. Building relations with the region’s autocratic leaders and maintaining a status quo based on a personalistic approach might be effective for some time, but in the long run the Kremlin’s strategy fails to institutionalize relations and thus will be unable to protect them from disruption.

Nearly two years have passed since the Syrian regime declared its reclaimed control over Daraa governorate in southern Syria in July 2018.

Iran is currently facing an incredibly unlucky alignment of pressure sources that are interrelated and will force the regime to engage in risky or experimental behavior, most likely in 2020. The COVID-19 epidemic simply exacerbates the combined challenges of a regime squeezed by an international sanctions network and a restive population reaching a breaking point with economic hardship. A continued acceptance of the status quo is untenable; thus, the regime will likely begin to undertake various initiatives in the coming months, more likely military than diplomatic in nature, that could force the United States to ease the isolation of the country.

The satellite images published on May 26 by AFRICOM appear to confirm reports that Russian MiG-29 jet fighters had flown to Libya. In fact, the MiG-29s travelled to Libya via Russia’s Hemeimeem air base in Syria, and as this latest episode makes clear, Hemeimeem plays a central role in Russia’s growing involvement in both the Mediterranean and Africa.

Far from his native Tehran in bucolic West Vancouver, Parviz Tanavoli, the 83-year-old “father of modern Iranian sculpture,” contemplates the fate of his homeland. “My heart breaks when I see what is happening in Iran now,” says the renowned artist, who divides his time between a life of relative obscurity on Canada’s Pacific coast, and Tehran, where he is referred to simply as “Master Tanavoli.”