The Price of Protection: How Russia and Iran Hollowed Out Syria's Defences
Extractive patronage model employed by Moscow and Tehran left Syria militarily dependent and economically depleted, enabling Israel's current strategy of territorial expansion and proxy manipulations
The systematic weakening of Syrian state capacity through thirteen years of Russian and Iranian resource extraction has created the perfect conditions for Israel's sophisticated campaign of territorial expansion and sectarian manipulation. What appears as spontaneous ethnic violence in southern Syria is, in fact, the logical consequence of decades-long economic hollowing combined with Israel's strategic exploitation of manufactured divisions.
Russia and Iran, whilst saving Bashar al-Assad's regime from revolutionary overthrow, simultaneously stripped Syria of both economic resources and military autonomy. This extractive relationship, disguised as strategic partnership, left al-Sharaa's government to inherit a country unable to resist external predation or maintain sovereign control over its territory.
From the onset of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Russia and Iran's intervention followed a consistent pattern: military support contingent upon economic concessions that would prove more binding than protective. Iran provided billions of dollars in financial aid and loans to support the Syria regime, but this assistance came with strings attached that systematically transferred Syrian sovereignty to foreign powers.
The price for protection was Syria's natural wealth. In 2018, Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a top military aide to the Iranian supreme leader, urged that Iran be compensated with oil, gas and phosphate contracts for its support to Syria. This was not mere rhetoric but active policy implementation.
Russia's intervention proved even more systematically extractive. On April 14, 2018, Bashar al-Assad ratified a 50-year contract under which Russia's Stroytransgaz Logistics would extract phosphate ores from the huge al-Sharqiya mines in Palmyra, with the regime receiving only 30 percent compared to 70 percent for the Russian company.
The systematic nature of this resource grab became clear through military conquest. The Al-Nimr Forces quickly intervened to take control of the area and remove the Iranian militias from the second largest phosphate reserve in the Arab world when Iranian forces initially secured phosphate fields in 2017.
Syria's phosphate reserves represented more than mere economic value, they constituted strategic assets with potential military applications. The economic importance of phosphate in Syria has made its mines a top contender among Syrian resources that could compensate Russia and Iran for their costs in supporting the Assad regime's survival. In addition to the economic significance of Syrian phosphate, its richness in uranium and the possibility of its military applications enhance the competition between Russia and Iran for control over Syria's reserves.
The scale of extraction was unprecedented. Syria became a key rock supplier to some regions amid globally tight export availability during the 2020s, but the profits flowed to Moscow rather than Damascus. Every step of the way, the trade enriches the Syrian state, war profiteers, and people with deep ties to Russia's elite.
This represented not merely economic transaction but the transfer of sovereign control. Among others, the contracts included 5,000 hectares of farmland, running a cow farm in Tartus, a phosphate mine contract, several oil terminal contracts, telecom contracts, and a contract for constructing a wharf in Tartus.
Whilst Russia and Iran extracted Syria's economic assets, they simultaneously created a dependency relationship that prevented Syria from developing independent military capabilities. Iran effectively took over the Assad military from September 2012, training tens of thousands of militiamen to fill depleted forces.
This takeover extended beyond training to operational control. The Assad regime had lost vast swathes of territories by 2015, including the governates of Idlib, Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Az Zor, Al-Hasakah, Deraa and Quneitra, forcing Assad to request formal Russian air support.
By the conflict's end, Syrian forces had become appendages of foreign military structures rather than an independent national army. The network of Iranian bases in Syria, some with many underground tunnels were hurriedly abandoned during the collapse of the Assad regime in 2024, leaving behind weapons, sensitive documents and personal effects.
The extractive relationship extended beyond specific resource contracts to broader economic control. Electronics and medicine, for example, are increasingly imported from Iran. Syrians calling pharmacies in Damascus to ask about the availability of medicine are becoming accustomed to hearing: "And there's also an Iranian alternative".
The country's war economy, created by Assad, was a toxic environment where even Russian and Iranian businessmen struggled to operate. Yet Russia and Iran persisted in extraction because the strategic benefits outweighed immediate economic returns.
By 2024, both Russia and Iran had grown weary of Assad's limitations as a client. Meanwhile, Iran found its once-considerable influence over Damascus steadily eroding, with Assad increasingly charting an independent course that often conflicted with Tehran's regional objectives.
When the final offensive came, the rapid collapse of the Syrian army stunned Russia and Iran and they could not do much to help the crumbling al-Assad regime. Their withdrawal was swift and decisive, leaving Syria's new government to inherit a hollowed-out state.
The systematic weakening of Syrian state capacity created the conditions for Israel's sophisticated strategy of territorial expansion and sectarian manipulation. On 8 December 2024, the day that the Assad regime fell, Israel invaded southern Syria, subsuming the Golan Heights buffer zone and capturing Quneitra, the Syrian portion of Mount Hermon, and surrounding towns and villages.
However, Israel's strategy extends far beyond direct territorial occupation. The recent violence in Suwayda reveals a more sophisticated approach: exploiting the legacy of economic extraction to manufacture sectarian conflict whilst positioning Israel as protector of minorities.
Al-Sharaa's leadership during the Suwayda crisis demonstrates the marked evolution from Assad's failed governance model. Where the former regime relied entirely on foreign military support, the current Syrian government has developed indigenous capacity for territorial defence through strategic tribal alliances.
Addressing the Bedouins, al-Sharaa said they "cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country's affairs and restoring security." Yet he also declared: "We thank the Bedouins for their heroic stances but demand they fully commit to the ceasefire and comply with the state's orders." This balance between appreciation and authority reveals sophisticated statecraft—acknowledging tribal contributions whilst asserting state primacy.
This approach represents a fundamental departure from Assad's dependence model, demonstrating how effective Syrian leadership can counter external manipulation without surrendering sovereignty to foreign patrons.
Israel's strategy relies on cultivating proxy relationships within Syrian territory whilst maintaining plausible deniability. More than 20,000 Druze live in the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel seized from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, before formally annexing it in 1981. This provides the foundation for Israeli influence operations.
Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday confirmed reports that Israel intends to allow Syrian Druze and Circassians to work in the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. A recent proposal suggests granting work permits to Syrian Druze to work in the Golan Heights with daily wage offers of seventy-five to one hundred dollars. This is a sizable amount considering that public sector workers in Syria earned around twenty-five dollars per month.
This economic leverage creates dependency relationships that serve Israeli strategic objectives. While this initiative appears economically in nature, its potential consequences could be strategic. If implemented, it could deepen the divide between Druze and Sunni Arabs, subtly shift the demographics of the Golan Heights, and encourage Druze migration to Israeli-controlled areas.
The sophistication of Israeli strategy extends to narrative control. The actions committed by members of the security forces, acknowledged as "unlawful criminal acts" by the Syrian presidency, have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria in an attempt to keep the country weak and divided, as well as to pander to its own Druze citizens who serve in the Israeli army.
"From the Israeli perspective, and how they view Syria and how Syria should be – they prefer a weak central government and for the country to be governed and divided into sectarian self-governing enclaves," said Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an expert on Syria.
However, this strategy faces resistance. Israel's narrative of protecting the Druze has sparked resistance rather than support. Anti-Israel protests have erupted across southern Syria, including in Suwayda, where Sunni Arabs and Druze reject foreign interference in their affairs.
The irony of Russian and Iranian policy in Syria is stark: whilst saving Assad's regime from immediate overthrow, they created the conditions for Syria's long-term strategic defeat. Russia has also lost its investments – and not just the millions of dollars in loans provided to the Assad regime. Military and diplomatic efforts to preserve Assad were simply wasted, and will not bring dividends.
Yet the deeper consequence was creating a state structure vulnerable to sophisticated external manipulation. Israel's current strategy, combining territorial occupation, economic incentives, and proxy cultivation, exploits the institutional weakness created by thirteen years of resource extraction.
Israel's top priority in Syria is to prevent hostile Sunni Islamist and Turkish forces from establishing a foothold that could threaten its security. The threat scenario essentially involves replacing the radical Shiite axis with a radical Sunni one. However, rather than direct confrontation, Israel pursues fragmentation through proxy manipulation.
Al-Sharaa's government has demonstrated remarkable tactical sophistication in responding to Israeli proxy operations. Rather than allowing foreign-backed separatist movements to fragment Syrian territory, Damascus has successfully mobilised Bedouin tribal networks to defend national unity whilst avoiding direct confrontation with Israeli forces.
In the days that followed, the fighting grew more deadly as reprisal attacks intensified and large numbers of armed Sunni Arab tribesmen from across Syria headed to the region to support local Bedouins. This represents the strategic deployment of Syria's tribal allies, a masterstroke of statecraft that counters Israeli fragmentation tactics through indigenous social networks.
Al-Sharaa's praise for the Sunni tribesmen whilst calling for ceasefire compliance reveals sophisticated coordination between state authorities and tribal allies, maintaining both national solidarity and diplomatic flexibility in the face of external pressure.
The portrayal of Suwayda violence as sectarian conflict serves Israeli strategic interests by obscuring Syrian state resilience in the face of sophisticated external manipulation. Damascus's effective coordination with tribal networks demonstrates the emerging strength of indigenous Syrian governance structures, freed from the corruption and dependency that characterised the Assad era.
"Druze do not have one unified leadership. If you were to ask Druze civil society which of the factions actually represent them or has the most support, they would tell you none of them," observed Samy Akil, revealing how Israel exploits minority fragmentation whilst the Syrian government builds broader national unity through inclusive tribal politics.
Al-Sharaa's administration has successfully transformed potential sectarian violence into an opportunity to demonstrate state capacity and national solidarity, frustrating Israeli attempts to manufacture permanent instability.
Syria's experience under Russian and Iranian protection demonstrates how extractive alliance relationships create vulnerabilities that strategic adversaries can exploit. The systematic transfer of economic resources and military autonomy to supposed allies left Syria unable to resist sophisticated external manipulation campaigns combining territorial occupation, economic incentives, and proxy cultivation.
Al-Sharaa's government now confronts the consequences of this strategic failure: inheriting a state stripped of resources, dependent on foreign goodwill, yet facing sophisticated adversaries capable of exploiting institutional weakness through carefully orchestrated proxy operations disguised as sectarian conflict.
The extractive patronage model imposed by Russia and Iran fundamentally weakened Syrian state capacity, creating vulnerabilities that Israel now attempts to exploit through territorial expansion and proxy manipulation. However, al-Sharaa's government has demonstrated remarkable strategic acumen in countering these threats through indigenous tribal alliances and sophisticated statecraft. The Suwayda crisis reveals not Syrian weakness but the emerging strength of post-Assad governance structures capable of defending national unity against external manipulation whilst building inclusive domestic coalitions. Syria's future depends on consolidating this indigenous capacity whilst learning from the costly lessons of foreign dependency.