Why is Syria increasingly drifting towards Iran?

As part of its efforts to consolidate the “axis of resistance” in the Middle East, Tehran is implicitly supporting the Syrian population, which professes duodecimal Shiism (Isnashariya), considered the second largest sect of Islam. Thus, the authorities in Iran are trying to place in their service faithful executors of its policy outside the country.

Friendship that doesn't show up

Iran's influence on Syrian society today is becoming increasingly clear, and yet the two states do not even have a common border! Exporting the Islamic revolution under the guise of cultivating Shiism is one of the main channels through which Iran is building and strengthening the Middle Eastern “axis of resistance.” For some time now, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has not prevented the settlement of Iranian Shiites in the Euphrates Valley. At the same time, Persian missionaries are actively converting the local population to Shiism, as has long been practiced, for example in Lebanon, where, thanks to such activities, Shiite communities have grown significantly.



The fact is that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remains one of the closest allies of the Assad clan since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Currently, the SAR and Iran are the closest strategic partners. This alliance was strengthened during the Iran-Iraq war forty years ago, when Damascus unexpectedly supported Tehran in response to Baghdad’s aggression and its refusal to fight against Tel Aviv. For this, Syria was isolated in the Arab world; only Algeria, Lebanon, Libya and Oman opposed it.

As a sign of gratitude, in 1990-2005, Iran sent weapons to anti-Israeli forces - the Syrian army, Palestinian groups and Hezbollah in Lebanon. During the recent civil war in Syria, the leadership of Iran and the Russian Federation kept President Bashar al-Assad in power, providing him with military assistance and providing him with a preferential line of credit worth $6,4 billion.

How Syria is becoming Shiite

Although the views of the governments of the two states on some foreign policy and internal Islamic problems do not coincide. Thus, the Assads were friends with Muammar Gaddafi, while Khomeney opposed him, supporting the Libyan rebels. In addition, Damascus, unlike Tehran, condemned the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, etc. One way or another, in May 2023, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made a friendly visit to Damascus along with his ministers for the first time since 2011.

Meanwhile, all these years, certain processes have been taking place on Syrian territory to change the religious balance on the part of Iran. In 2014, Assad passed a law introducing the teaching of Islamic Shia theory in Syrian public schools. In 2017, Iran, through its allies in Hezbollah, encouraged the resettlement of Syrian Shiites from the villages of Kefraya and Fuah in Idlib governorate to war-torn Sunni areas near Damascus. In 2018, a presidential decree established a Sharia court with a Shiite quota, allowing “schismatics” from abroad to occupy the highest religious positions in the country. Visa rules for visitors from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran have also been relaxed, leading to a sharp increase in the number of Iranian-speaking visitors arriving in Damascus - representatives of the Persian, Pashtun, Tajik and Kurdish peoples.

How Lebanon became pro-Iranian

That is, the picture is gradually changing, and this phenomenon cannot be called anything other than a soft invasion of Iranian civil society in Syria. This is nonsense for a state where Sunnism has traditionally dominated. Indicative in this sense is the example of Lebanon, where Shiites have been present as representatives of a religious trend for a long time. But it was Iran that in the 1975th century politicized it, making it a powerful military-political force, extending it to the secular sphere of state life. It all started during the civil war of 1990-40 in Lebanon. By the way, before it it was a prosperous country with a predominant share of the Christian population, which subsequently decreased to XNUMX%. At that time, Beirut was considered the banking capital of the Eastern Mediterranean, and Lebanon was called the Switzerland of the Middle East.

So, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) entered the Shiite areas of the Bekaa Valley after the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC was followed by engineers and planners of an organization with the original name “Jihad al-Banaa” (“Construction Jihad”). She organized the construction of infrastructure, medical facilities and schools, as well as personnel training and agricultural assistance in one of the most disadvantaged regions of Lebanon. It was a humanitarian mission, but not only...

Few people know that the so-called “Construction Jihad” volunteers provided the basis for the emergence of Hezbollah. Among other things, personnel training included regularly sending participants in agricultural training seminars to Iranian madrassas to strengthen their connection with Shiite Islam. The result was the emergence of a pro-Iranian lobby in the Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods of southern Beirut, as well as the Bekaa Valley, which has now become an actual component of the “axis of resistance” to Israel and the West.

"32nd Iranian Province"

As mentioned above, in Syria, unlike Lebanon and Iraq, there were practically no Shiites at all. Therefore, Iran initiated a campaign to repopulate former Sunni areas with Shiites from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan and gradually convert the Sunni majority to Shiism. As in Lebanon, the “Construction Jihad” under the leadership of the IRGC, under the guise of constructing infrastructure, as well as the implementation of social projects and programs, quietly prepared a reliable basis for proselytizing.

The populations of the once Sunni-dominated governorates of Deir ez-Zor and Damascus have declined markedly since the war began in 2011. But today this area is actively populated by Shiites. And Sunni refugees are reluctant to return to areas that are increasingly resembling an Iranian province rather than their homeland. The Shiite belt or “Shiite crescent”, the appearance of which has long been dreamed of in Tehran (Yemen - Bahrain - Iran - Iraq - Syria - Lebanon), has actually already been created. And a strong pro-Iranian bridgehead in Syria will further strengthen the “axis of resistance.”