Syria’s interim prime minister took power with the support of the rebels who ousted President Bashar al-Assad as outside powers — including Russia, Turkey, the United States, and Israel — maneuvered to protect their geopolitical interests in the war-torn Middle East nation.
In an address on recently captured state TV, Muhammad al-Bashir said he would lead Syria’s interim authority through March 1 as the new rulers, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militants, looked to solidify control after deposing Assad over the weekend.
Little-known Bashir, born in Idlib Province in 1982 and an engineering graduate, had once worked for Syria’s state gas entity and has served as head of the rebel’s so-called Salvation Government for the past year.
HTS has been designated a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. In recent years, the group severed ties with Al-Qaeda and sought to remake itself as a pragmatic alternative to the Syrian government, although Western powers and rights groups remain cautious.
Meanwhile, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, on December 10 told NBC News that Moscow is providing sanctuary to Assad after transporting him there “in the most secure way possible.” He didn’t provide further details.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on December 9 that President Vladimir Putin made the decision personally to grant asylum to Assad and his family.
Earlier on December 10, loud explosions were heard amid reports Israel has been systematically striking Syrian military installations following the ouster of Assad’s brutal regime.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that the military had struck several Syrian sites and had hit its naval vessels in overnight strikes.
“The [military] has been operating in Syria in recent days to strike and destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel. The navy operated last night to destroy the Syrian fleet with great success,” Katz said.
Katz said Israel’s military has been ordered to create a weapons-free zone in southern Syria “to prevent the establishment and organization of terrorism] in the country.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said Israel had “destroyed the most important military sites in Syria,” including “airports and their warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and many weapons and ammunition depots in various locations in most Syrian governorates.”
The reports came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “transforming the face of the Middle East” and defeating its enemies “step by step” in what he called an “existential war that has been imposed upon us.”
Netanyahu said Assad’s regime had been a “central element of Iran’s axis of evil,” accusing it of facilitating a “weapons pipeline” between Iran and the Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States. Israel has launched a monthslong air campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
Washington has also conducted some 75 air strikes on Islamic State (IS) militants, who still have a presence in Syria, in recent days to prevent the group from taking advantage of the turmoil that followed Assad’s fall.
“You can expect that kind of activity will continue. We don’t want to give [IS] an opportunity to exploit what is going on,” White House national-security spokesman John Kirby said on December 10.
The United States has about 900 troops in Syria as part of its decade-long fight against IS.
“[IS] will try to use this period to reestablish its capabilities, to create safe havens,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on December 9. “As our precision strikes over the weekend demonstrate, we are determined not to let that happen.”
Washington said it is seeking ways to engage with Syrian rebel groups and is reaching out to partners in the region, including Turkey, to initiate informal contacts.
“We have the ability to communicate with the opposition groups, and we’ll continue to do that,” Kirby said in his briefing.
The Syrian Observatory also said IS militants killed at least 54 government soldiers who were fleeing advancing rebels “during the collapse of the regime” in the Sukhna area of Homs Province. The report could not immediately be verified.
Meanwhile, satellite imagery by Planet Labs showed Russian naval ships have left their Syrian base at Tartus, with some dropping anchor offshore.
Imagery showed at least three vessels — including two guided missile frigates — some 13 kilometers off the coast.
Russia has an estimated 7,500 troops and multiple military sites in Syria, including an air base at Hmeimim along with the strategic naval facilities at Tartus, which are also used to support the Kremlin’s actions in North and sub-Saharan Africa.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has ties to many of the rebel groups involved in the takeover, said Ankara will act against anyone seeking to compromise its Syrian territory.
“From now on, we cannot allow Syria to be divided again…. Any attack on the freedom of the Syrian people, the stability of the new administration, and the integrity of its lands will find us standing against it,” he said.
Turkey has claimed U.S.-backed Syrian-Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria to be “terrorists” linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated as a terrorist group by Ankara, as well as by Washington.
Tehran, which was also a long-standing backer of Assad, on December 10 said some 4,000 Iranian citizens have left Syria over the past three days. Iranian proxies are thought to have multiple military sites inside Syria, some of which have been hit by Israeli air attacks, but the government has so far been relatively muted in its response to Assad’s fall.
On December 9, the UN Security Council held a closed-door meeting on the situation in Syria called by Russia, which together with Iran, has been a main backer of Assad’s regime.
“The Council, I think, was more or less united on the need to preserve the territorial integrity and unity of Syria, to ensure the protection of civilians, to ensure that humanitarian aid is coming to the population in need,” said Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, in a statement released after the meeting.
The HTS-led rebels announced on December 9 that they were granting amnesty to all military personnel conscripted during Assad’s rule, which began in 2000 following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had seized power in 1970.
Ahmad al-Sharaa, 42, previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, has become the public face of HTS, which itself was formerly known as the Al Nusra Front, among other names.
Several European states on December 9 announced they were suspending the granting of asylum requests from Syrians as they awaited developments.
The flood of Syrian refugees during the country’s 14-year civil war has often been used by far-right politicians in Europe to inflame passions and bolster their support among voters.
The EU has urged a peaceful political transition in Syria, saying that “it is imperative that all stakeholders engage in an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned dialogue on all key issues.”
But EU spokesman Anouar El Anouni said the bloc was “not currently engaging with HTS or its leaders, full stop.”
The Syrian civil war began after Assad’s regime unleashed a brutal crackdown in March 2011 against peaceful demonstrators inspired by the wave of protests known as the Arab Spring that were sweeping the Middle East at the time.
Beginning in 2015, Russia intervened in the civil war on Assad’s side, unleashing a massive bombing campaign against the rebel groups, including Islamist militants, causing numerous civilian casualties and prompting tens of thousands to flee.
The fall of the Assad regime marks a major geopolitical setback for the Kremlin, which, along with Iran, has propped up his government, experts say.
