In an interview with Oneindia’s Pankaj Mishra, Iranian Geopolitical expert Ehsan Safanejad discussed Iran's crucial role in supporting Bashar al-Assad's regime during the Syrian conflict. He analysed the potential impact of Assad's regime collapse on Iran's strategic interests, particularly regarding the Shia Crescent and its ties with Hezbollah. Safanejad also delved into the geopolitical fallout for Iran, considering the involvement of Russia, the US and Turkey in Syria. He highlighted Iran’s need to adjust its foreign policy to safeguard its interests in a post-Assad Syria.
#Iran, #SyriaConflict, #Geopolitics, #MiddleEast, #AssadRegime
Also Read
Russia Offers Asylum To Exiled Bashar Al-Assad After Rebel Victory, Kremlin Confirms :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/russia-offers-asylum-to-exiled-bashar-al-assad-after-rebel-victory-kremlin-confirms-4010547.html
India Calls For Preserving Syria's Unity Amid Rebel Takeover :: https://www.oneindia.com/india/india-calls-for-preserving-syria-s-unity-amid-rebel-takeover-011-4010501.html
World Reacts To Assad's Ouster From Syria: From Jubilation To Uncertainty :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/world-reacts-to-assads-ouster-from-syria-from-jubilation-to-uncertainty-4010285.html
~HT.97~PR.282~GR.344~ED.194~
#Iran, #SyriaConflict, #Geopolitics, #MiddleEast, #AssadRegime
Also Read
Russia Offers Asylum To Exiled Bashar Al-Assad After Rebel Victory, Kremlin Confirms :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/russia-offers-asylum-to-exiled-bashar-al-assad-after-rebel-victory-kremlin-confirms-4010547.html
India Calls For Preserving Syria's Unity Amid Rebel Takeover :: https://www.oneindia.com/india/india-calls-for-preserving-syria-s-unity-amid-rebel-takeover-011-4010501.html
World Reacts To Assad's Ouster From Syria: From Jubilation To Uncertainty :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/world-reacts-to-assads-ouster-from-syria-from-jubilation-to-uncertainty-4010285.html
~HT.97~PR.282~GR.344~ED.194~
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome with the developments in the Middle East, especially Syria, and Bashar
00:06al-Assad now exiting his own country, going to Russia, and what he leaves behind is legacy
00:15or not remains debatable, but the whole geopolitical scenario that is evolving in that particular
00:21region has become the center of attraction.
00:24What started as an Israeli offensive against Hamas now percolating down to Hezbollah and
00:33Iran found its ricochet effect in the form of the exit of Bashar al-Assad and how these
00:43things are interconnected, how they are shaping the geopolitics of today to discuss that further.
00:48I have, it's my pleasure, that Ehsan Safarnejad is joining us from Iran, he's an Iranian geopolitical
00:55analyst.
00:56Ehsan, thank you so much for joining One India once again.
01:01Thanks for inviting me.
01:03Well, Ehsan, you know, we have seen, we have discussed earlier many a times on different
01:10axis and different intensity of war that was happening in the past.
01:19Now with the recent developments in Syria, Iran certainly has been a key ally of Bashar
01:25al-Assad throughout the Syrian conflict.
01:29Now how do you see Iran's role with Assad's government gone now?
01:35What does it mean for Iranian influence in the region?
01:39Well, it's almost certainly a very important blow that was dealt to Iran and the axis of
01:46resistance in general, you know, seeing the government of Bashar al-Assad collapsing.
01:55Syria played a very pivotal role for the Iranian government to send and arm the resistance
02:05groups inside Levant, more specifically Hezbollah and Hamas groups in Lebanon and Palestine,
02:18respectively.
02:20So, I mean, now that this government has fallen, the land corridor that was established and it
02:28was playing a very important role in sort of transferring the logistics side of the
02:39military operations against Israel is now gone.
02:42That corridor is now vanished, right?
02:46So, no one can undermine this loss and the victory that was achieved by Israel.
02:55And I do call it an Israeli victory because, I mean, if we talk about the details, it becomes
03:01apparent how much of a big role and impact both Israel and the United States had in these
03:11terrorist groups gaining territories and, you know, taking the control of the country.
03:17Very famously, Secretary General of Hezbollah once said, if Syria falls, Palestine will fall.
03:27So, I mean, this is a very key figure inside the axis of resistance and he uses this kind
03:36of language in order to show the importance of Syria in the way that it was integrated
03:45into the axis of resistance and the role that it was playing, you know, helping the
03:51resistance groups inside the region.
03:53So, surely the fall of the Syrian government is something that, again, no one can undermine
04:01that it was a rather big deal.
04:04However, I think that, you know, not unlike many other things that we have seen in the
04:10past three or four years, you know, and more specifically after the start of the Russian
04:18special operation, now the full-on war between Ukraine and Russia, that, you know, people
04:26tend to become hectic, they tend to exaggerate.
04:31Let's not forget, Iran was in much worse situations prior to this.
04:38Let's remember that in 2001, United States governments invaded Afghanistan and in 2003,
04:47they invaded Iraq.
04:48So, in 2003, if you were living inside Iran, the left neighboring country of Iran and the
04:56right neighboring country of Iran were both occupied by United States and then in 2006,
05:03you had the war between Hezbollah and Israel and back then, I remember very vividly that
05:12people were saying, even the analysts, so this was not just like random people on the
05:18street saying this, but people were saying that once these countries are done, they will
05:25surely come for Iran and you were seeing the dispatching of, you know, the US aircraft
05:32carriers into Persian Gulf.
05:33So, you have no place to go from east, no place to go from west and in your southern
05:40part, the southern regions, if you go further, you reach the international waters and have
05:46to deal with US aircraft carriers.
05:49We were in much worse situation before and the situation in 2013, when ISIS was going
05:58rampant was also very bad, you know.
06:02Back then, even Iraq was unstable, right?
06:05Let's not forget, ISIS moved towards Iraq and it even captured some key cities like
06:12Mosul and other major cities.
06:15So, this is different, not just to prior instance in which ISIS and these terrorist groups gained
06:25territories in Syria and Iraq, but also it is far from comparable to the scenario and
06:33the situation that we faced and experienced in 2003, 2004 and we passed those years with
06:41relatively, I wouldn't say easily, but relative ease, but we passed those hard days and, you
06:52know, in the battlefield, you can't always win.
06:55You win some fights, you lose some fights.
06:59It's important to win the overall conflict, the overall battle.
07:03Right.
07:05Ehsan, you know, when we think of Syria, Middle East, Lebanon, Israel all together, the very
07:14picture that comes to mind and for any, you know, student of international relations,
07:20it's a very complex scenario there with Iran also being one of the key players standing
07:25its ground, United States, Russia, Turkey, all of them are finding some reason or other
07:34to be there.
07:34We have seen in 2015 also how the issue of the Syrian crisis had spilled a very huge
07:44migrant crisis in the Middle East.
07:47And now with Bashar al-Assad gone, what, in your opinion, is going to be the scenario
07:54next when all these players are descending, possibly because of oil, possibly because
08:01of their own strategic interest, but where does this leave Syrians, first of all, and
08:07secondly, what lies ahead for them?
08:09Well, you know, it's very hard to say exactly what will happen.
08:15I mean, as an analyst, you always want to play this very fine line.
08:22You don't want to talk for hours and hours without actually predicting something.
08:27But at the same time, you don't want to become, you sort of think of yourself as a fortune
08:34teller, right?
08:35As it stands, the data, the information is still rather limited for us to reach any concrete
08:46conclusion about what is going to happen.
08:49But from the key theories, for example, the Indian theory, which is about the balkanization
08:58of the countries inside the Middle East, from the role that the United States, Israel, had
09:09in the conflicts in the region and in supporting these terrorist groups, and, you know, from
09:16the sorts of playbooks that we have in the politics, you know, there are certain things
09:24that almost have become a cliche.
09:25And, you know, these things are going to happen.
09:28For example, Britain sort of made Afghanistan into a buffer zone, right?
09:37When it sort of was facing the Russian Empire, right?
09:41So, and this is something very simple.
09:44So, what I see in the future of Syria is probably, you know, multiple fractions sort of trying
09:52to sort of oppose one another.
09:56The separatists, most certainly, I'm mostly referring to the Syrian Democratic Forces,
10:03which is made up of Arabs in general, apologies, not Arabs, the Kurds.
10:08There are Arabs in Syrian Democratic Forces as well.
10:13But, you know, the majority is ethnicity.
10:17Inside that group is the Kurdish ethnicity.
10:21With that, and with the existence of groups like HDS, Ahrar al-Sham, let's not forget
10:28some of these groups fight against one another prior to this in the previous conflict, I'm
10:35referring to 2015, 2016, they fought one another.
10:40So, they're not really, you know, very fond of each other, right, to say the least.
10:46And we had the Israeli invasion of Golan regions.
10:51I mean, Golan was already occupied by Israel, but now they are even reaching further into
10:57the Syrian territories.
11:00If I was a person in charge of furthering the Syrian project inside Mosul, inside CIA,
11:10I wouldn't see it as beneficial to create a scenario, create the circumstances under
11:18which one group would gain the absolute victory and would sort of establish a central strong
11:30government, right?
11:33A federal, if a central government is going to be made, it most certainly must be in the
11:43format of a federal government, right, that you would see further down the road, you would
11:51be able to tweak these smaller states, the federal, local governments, and you would
11:58be able to do something with them, you know, to use them in your own interest.
12:05So, I'm mostly seeing instability inside Syria.
12:10But still, it is very early on for talking very decisively what the future of Syria will
12:20hold for us.
12:21Right.
12:22If I may just add Iran's stand and Iran's stakes in Syria, it all started with October 7,
12:31much earlier also, we saw Israel fighting with Hamas, then Hezbollah, assassinations in Iran,
12:40Iran pledged that it will hit back, it did fire missiles.
12:44But now, do you think that with Israel charging in with the support of the United States,
12:52Iran's interests and Iran's stakes in Middle East, especially in Syria, face a tough time,
12:59face uncertainties now?
13:03Yeah, absolutely.
13:05You know, Bashar al-Assad was a very key figure inside Syria.
13:10And again, some people try to undermine what happened in Syria.
13:15I think that those people are unequivocally, without any doubt, undoubtedly wrong.
13:21Right.
13:22This was a very major loss for the Axis of Resistance, not just Iran.
13:27And, you know, for now, I think that Israel has taken up the initiative in this overall
13:35conflict.
13:37With Iran, you mentioned, you know, Iran pledging to take revenge on Israel and, you know,
13:46other things that come with the baggage of being sort of the main country behind the idea of Axis
13:53of Resistance.
13:55Unfortunately, after the, if you like me, are pro the idea of resistance, you would feel that
14:07unfortunately, after the election of Massa Pazishkian as the new president of Iran,
14:14the Iranian losses have been become more and more serious, and harder and harder to ignore.
14:22In the past three months, we have seen the complete change in the dynamic of the war
14:29between Iran and Israel.
14:31You know, back there during the time of Dr. Raisi, things were more normal.
14:38I'm not trying to say that the Palestinians were not being massacred by the genocidal
14:45Israeli regime.
14:47No, that was happening.
14:48And even in that time, people from time to time would criticize Iran and say, okay, Iran
14:55should do more as the country that is the birthplace of resistance in a way.
15:01But now it has become completely impossible for any serious analyst to ignore or reject
15:09the idea of Pazishkian, not really permitting 100% to the idea of resistance.
15:19And this showed itself in the rhetoric that Mr. Pazishkian used.
15:25Let's not forget, both Mr. Pazishkian and Mr. Javad Zarif, who is his deputy president
15:33for Strategic Affairs, both of them said that after the assassination of Mr. Ismail Haniyeh,
15:39the head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, the Europeans suggested actually, that Iran
15:49should not take revenge or retaliate because of the possibility of ceasefire.
15:57And both these two gentlemen said that they were deceived, they were fooled.
16:02And, you know, the fact that the Western countries didn't really commit by what they
16:09proposed, right?
16:11So when you have that circumstance, when you have a scenario in which Iran says that it
16:18is going to hold the 60% enrichment of uranium in our country, and then the Europeans, you
16:28know, pass an anti-Iranian resolution in IAEA Board of Governors, there are so many countries
16:34that vote, but it was mainly a European idea to sort of pass that anti-Iranian resolution.
16:44And then the Iranian side sort of retaliates in a very limited way, installing new centrifuges
16:51in Iran.
16:52But it also expresses interest in, you know, still continuing the talks with United States
17:00and European countries, and not just about the Iranian nuclear program, but this time
17:04also about, for example, the war in Ukraine, the Iranian regional influence.
17:11And then still, you hear that 30-something new sanction entities inside Iran were sanctioned
17:18by United States and Western countries in general.
17:23When you see that kind of reaction, that kind of capitulation, it becomes harder to really
17:30compare the administration of Mr. Pazishkian to the administration of Dr. Raisi.
17:35So I think that people should recalibrate their idea of Iranian foreign policy, the
17:41idea of Iranian, you know, regional influence and the way that Iran is going to choose its
17:48allies and, you know, collaborate with them in following certain objectives.
17:53Absolutely, Hasan.
17:55You have put it very elaborately here that what Iran needs within its own rights and
18:01within its own territory, and which wars to pick, which cases to pursue, which are
18:08outside its jurisdiction, outside its borders.
18:11And needless to say, the developments relating to Syria and now the newfound confidence of
18:19Israel and its wish to go the whole nine yards, how long will it sustain also remains to be
18:28seen, and when does it stop?
18:29That is the big question.
18:31Nonetheless, Hasan, thank you so much for joining us and we wish to host you again,
18:38time and again, I would say, but in better times to discuss a better future, not just
18:45for Iranians, not just for the Middle Eastern residents, but also for the world.
18:50Thank you so much.
18:53Again, thank you for inviting me to your show.