"We’re still trying to get to grips with what has happened, sitting here in the UK, from the outside: it’s pretty difficult. I don’t think that there’s anything on the energy front that is decisive in explaining what has happened. Instead, we need to think about the impact of an economically weakening Iranian regime over some time: in its ability to support a client regime in Syria. I don’t think, in the period of [Joe] Biden’s administration, Iranian decline has been decisive, because the US sanctions haven’t been that toughly enforced.

However, I don’t think there’s any doubt that, if you looked at Iran over time, going back to 2018, when the sanctions were put back on after Trump ended the nuclear deal, Iran has not been in a good position economically. It has been quite difficult for either Russia or China to act as external economic support for Iran. The sanctions on Syria since 2020 [the Caesar Act was passed in 2019] did hurt the Assad regime, making it difficult to pay salaries in the army. That’s also had some effect.

Syria is not a significant oil exporter. To the extent that the country does matter in energy terms: it’s in the Kurdish area, in the Kurdish statelet, rather than in any part of Syria that Assad controlled until recently. I think that there’s a longue durée story, if you like, about the overstretch of the Iranian regime and the effect of weakening Iran’s ability to earn revenue from oil exports. But it’s not the crux of what has happened. We’ve got to think about the weakening of Iran by Israel, particularly since last April, accelerated since the device attack [aimed at Hezbollah operatives] and also the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House. This has incentivized [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan to increase Turkish leverage in Syria."

https://jacobin.com/2025/01/assad-syria-middle-east-trump

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