Arab News | Syria’s support for Yemen and Saudi Arabia

Should Syrians choose to support Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the rest of the Gulf, it would come as no surprise. For years, Iran has waged its wars alongside Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani groups. For years, it has operated directly in Yemen through Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and advisers, recruiting foreign fighters who are currently battling alongside the Houthis across the country.

Alongside Iran’s multinational army, Tehran’s strategy is based on controlling the corners of the region and subjugating its states. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, wrote last week that everyone must accept Iran’s project and its seven-point plan, which secures Tehran’s hegemony over what he termed “West Asia,” spanning from the southern Red Sea to the northeastern Mediterranean.

Even if his threats are part of psychological and propaganda warfare, controlling Yemen and Iraq remains at the core of its strategy to expand its regional hegemony in a way that threatens its entire neighborhood.

From this perspective, the war in Yemen can be read as a regional conflict rather than an intra-Yemeni one. All of Iran’s wars over the past three decades have been part of an interconnected project, managed through Afghan, Pakistani, and Iraqi proxies that fought on its behalf in Syria and Iraq, and are now doing so in Yemen.

Addressing the issue of Syrian support, Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani said that should his country decide to deploy troops beyond its borders, it would not do so in secret.

Controlling Yemen and Iraq remains at the core of Iran’s strategy to expand its regional hegemony.

Abdulrahman Al-Rashed

We know the priorities of the Syrian state: stabilizing the country, strengthening its security, and fortifying it against external threats. Syrians, who have sought to reconcile with the Iranian regime and turn a new page since the very first day following the ouster of Bashar Assad’s regime, are well aware of Tehran’s animosity toward them.

Tehran has yet to recover from the shock of the Assad regime’s collapse — a regime it spent 10 years propping up, dedicating every resource at its disposal, and standing alongside it against the world to take part in massacres and destruction unprecedented in the region. The fall of the regime was entirely unexpected; it was a cornerstone of Iran’s regional strategy, and following its collapse, Tehran’s client states have been left hanging in the balance.

In the coming period, Iran is expected to seek to encircle Syria and weaken Damascus in an effort to regain a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, from which it has been completely cut off. By losing Damascus, Tehran also lost Beirut, leaving it with the weaker hand in the regional balance of power against Tel Aviv and Ankara.

This is why Iran’s wide-ranging attacks west of the Gulf, which targeted eight countries, are not an Iranian-American or Israeli war as the conflict originally began. In practice, by refraining from striking Israel and the United States in retaliation for their overt and covert operations, Tehran is yielding to the new reality, yet it seeks to compensate for its losses by regionalizing the conflict toward the Gulf states, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond.

Understanding the nature and evolution of Iranian thinking — and confronting it — requires broad regional cooperation to halt this new project. Iran, which no one thought would surrender to defeat in Lebanon, has effectively done so. It has done nothing beyond attempting to smuggle a few million dollars through a network of cash-carrying passengers to cover some of Hezbollah’s expenses.

Its defeat by Israel and the destruction of its strongholds in Damascus and Beirut are forcing it to redraw its regional activities. For Iran, Syria is no longer east of Israel; rather, Tehran now views it as north and west of Iraq. It will do everything in its power to weaken the new Syrian regime and reactivate the terrorist groups it previously succeeded in organizing and managing during the US occupation of Iraq.

As a regional power exhausted by the recent war and forced to recalculate, Iran recognizes that it is not on par to confront Israel. Instead, it will target other regional hubs in an effort to restore its presence, rebuild its capabilities, and cultivate proxies and leverage with which to bargain with the West, as well as China.

Iran’s shift away from confronting Israel, which it had long considered its regional rival, appears to be an increasingly tangible new reality day by day. This makes regional cooperation to counter the new threat an imperative for ensuring the region’s security and establishing a balance of power that compels Tehran to abandon the policy of expansion and aggression it has pursued since the founding of the republic.

• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a Saudi journalist and intellectual. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published.

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Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel, and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat. Twitter: @aalrashed

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