As the direct, state-on-state war between Israel and Iran—now joined by the United States—launched by Jerusalem to remove existential threats, transforms the strategic landscape of the Middle East, the new Sunni regime in Syria under the leadership of Ahmad al-Sharaa appears content to watch the battle while it quietly pursues its own interests.
Iran-backed militias have been trying to use Syria to smuggle more arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is deeply isolated since the December 2024 fall of its ally, the Assad regime.
The new government in Damascus is reportedly taking significant steps to dismantle the Iranian arms corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon, an enemy that the Sunni rebels who make up the new regime spent years fighting in Syria’s civil war.
Meanwhile, Israel on Saturday eliminated a top Iranian Quds Force commander who oversaw much of the previous arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria.
The former Assad regime had previously provided a vital land bridge for Iran to arm, train and fund its most powerful proxy in Lebanon.
Professor Eyal Zisser, vice rector of Tel Aviv University and chair in Contemporary History of the Middle East, told JNS that the memory of Iran’s brutal intervention in the Syrian civil war has forged a lasting enmity.
“The Syrian regime sees Iran as a hated enemy, certainly due to its involvement in the murder of Syrians during the country’s civil war,” Zisser stated. “Therefore, when Iran is being hit, the Syrians have no problem with it and there is even satisfaction at Iran’s troubles.”
Still, he said, “There is also fear of Israel and hostility towards it due to the history of relations between the two countries. So, the Syrians are left to watch what is happening from the stands, hoping it will not reach them and hoping that Iran will be beaten and that Israel will not exploit its achievements to put more pressure on Syria.”
Zisser added that this animosity extends directly to Iran’s primary proxy. “As for the smuggling—Hezbollah fought alongside the Iranians and alongside Bashar [al-Assad], so there is no love, only hatred towards Hezbollah and a fear that it will try to undermine stability in Syria,” he said, explaining the motivation behind the new Syrian regime’s interception of Iranian arms smuggling to Lebanon.
This strategic disposition is rooted in the history of the new regime itself. The ruling Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organization, led by al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), began as an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
However, in recent years it has undergone significant changes, formally breaking with al-Qaeda and rebranding itself as a Syrian Sunni nationalist-Islamist movement focused on governance and stability within Syria’s borders. It spent years fighting Shi’ite military formations and militias sent by Iran to try and rescue the Assad regime.
Recent events on the ground appear to confirm this strategic shift, which began before the current war with Iran. According to a May 25 Ynet report, the new Syrian government is actively working to shut down Iran’s arms smuggling routes.
The report cited the Syrian Al-Ikhbariya, which stated that internal Syrian security forces in Homs had thwarted an attempt to smuggle weapons and missiles across the border to Hezbollah. During the war in recent days, social media posts claimed to show images of weapons destined for Hezbollah intercepted in Syria.
For years, this smuggling corridor running from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon was the primary focus of Israel’s “campaign between the wars” shadow war. This low-intensity, long-term Israeli strategy involved thousands of airstrikes aimed at preventing Iranian military entrenchment in Syria and degrading the precision-weapon capabilities of Hezbollah.
A senior Israeli military official said Iran’s ability to supply Hezbollah had been severely weakened with the elimination of Behnam Shahriyari, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force Unit 190, who was killed in an airstrike on his vehicle in western Iran.
“His job was to arm and fund the different terror groups surrounding Israel,” the official stated, with a special emphasis on Hezbollah. “He was responsible for transferring funds to these terror organizations who aim to destroy Israel—Hezbollah, but not only Hezbollah. And we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars a year, in addition to weapons and arms.”
The official added, “We’ve operated a lot against this unit [190], specifically in [weapon] transfers between Syria to Lebanon. A lot of our operations throughout the years in the campaign between the wars [were dedicated to this goal], and we were able to eliminate the head of the snake of this unit.”
While the new regime in Damascus may be hampering Iran’s efforts, particularly in western Syria bordering Lebanon, the situation in northeastern Syria remains volatile and complex.
According to a June 18 report from Washington D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Long War Journal, Iran-backed militias, specifically the Islamic Resistance of Iraq (IRI), described as a collection of Iran-backed militias, launched missile attacks against three separate U.S. bases in northeastern Syria between June 14-15. The IRI includes United States-designated terrorist organizations like Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba.
The FDD report noted that while no American casualties were reported, the attacks demonstrate that Iranian proxies continue to operate with aggression from Syrian territory.
“The Iraqi and Syrian militias, under the aegis of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, have launched more than 180 attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since Hamas and its allies launched their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The IRI has deployed drones, rockets, missiles, and mortars in attacks against US forces in the region,” the report noted.