The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria shows a weakened Russia and Iran, the White House said on Monday (9), with both countries “no longer able to provide the support the regime needed to survive”.
“Assad’s main supporters, the Russians and the Iranians, were completely blindsided by this, but this was not just a mistake or an accident,” Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer told CNN .
The Assad regime, he added, “has effectively become a consortium Russian-Iranian war inside Syria, and both partners were no longer able to provide the support the regime needed to survive, and that is a big part of why it is no longer in power.”
“It’s not the first loss Iran has suffered over the last year in the Middle East,” Finer said, pointing to Hamas and Hezbollah, which he described as “greatly diminished.” He also claimed that Iran’s attempts to “attack Israel with ballistic missiles” have largely failed.
“This is not a moment of strength for Iran, and what the implications of that are I will leave for others to speculate, but this is, frankly, the result of the work of the United States and our partners over the last year, which has brought us at this point,” Finer said.
For Russia’s part, Finer said the war in Ukraine had already “shown what kind of security partner Russia can be for other countries.”
Understand the conflict in Syria
The Assad family regime was overthrown in Syria on December 8, after 50 years in power, when rebel groups took over the capital Damascus. President Bashar al-Assad has fled the country and is in Moscow after gaining asylum, according to a source in Russia.
Syria’s civil war began during the Arab Spring in 2011, when the regime of Bashar al-Assad suppressed a pro-democracy uprising. The country was plunged into full-scale conflict when a rebel force was formed, known as the Free Syrian Army, to fight government troops.
Furthermore, the Islamic State, a terrorist group, also managed to gain a foothold in the country and came to control 70% of Syrian territory.
Fighting escalated as other regional actors and world powers — from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States to Russia — joined in, escalating the country’s war into what some observers described as a “proxy war.”
Russia has allied with Bashar al-Assad’s government to combat the Islamic State and rebels, while the United States has led an international coalition to repel the terrorist group.
After a ceasefire agreement in 2020, the conflict remained largely “dormant”, with minor clashes between the rebels and the Assad regime.
More than 300,000 civilians have been killed in more than a decade of war, according to the UN, and millions of people have been displaced across the region.
Find out who the Syrian rebel leader is and the group that overthrew Bashar al-Assad
This content was originally published in Fall of Assad shows weakened position of allies, Russia and Iran, says White House on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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