Syrian rebels selected a new caretaker prime minister on Tuesday as the nation remains roiled by conflict after the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad. Mohammed al-Bashir assumes office on an interim basis amid ongoing fighting in parts of the country and as Israel and the U.S. take advantage of the post-Assad power vacuum in the form of mass airstrikes.
Bashir is a provincial leader aligned with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaidi-linked group that led the lightning 11-day offensive that toppled Assad. He will serve until March 1, 2025, Al Jazeera reported. His appointment was announced after meeting with members of the old Assad government.
“Today we had a meeting for the cabinet and we invited members from the old government and some directors from the administration in Idlib and its surrounding areas, in order to facilitate all the necessary works for the next two months until we have a constitutional system to be able to serve the Syrian people,” he told Al Jazeera.
Bashir headed the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in Idlib province before the rebel offensive and has close ties to HTS.
A Facebook page of the rebel administration says “al-Bashir was trained as an electrical engineer, later received a degree in sharia and law, and has also held posts in education,” Al Jazeera explained.
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani met outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali on Monday to discuss the transition to a caretaker government.
However, the peace Syria will need to establish a cohesive, inclusive government seems elusive.
Israel on Tuesday said it had largely completed its campaign of air and naval strikes on Syria’s air defenses, missiles and ships it dubbed internally “Bashan Arrow.” However, Jerusalem has created what Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday was a “sterile buffer zone” with ground troops in Syria. He later said it would be a temporary presence, though he offered no end date to the operation.
As we previously reported, Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the Israel-Syria border over the weekend. It is a roughly 400-square-kilometer (155-square-mile) section of the Golan Heights that was established after the 1973 Mideast war. The push marks Israel’s first overt entry into Syrian territory since then.
New reports emerged on Tuesday claiming that Israeli forces in Syria “have reached about 25 kilometers (16 miles) southwest of Damascus,” The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday, citing two regional security sources and one Syrian security source.
“The Syrian security source said Israeli troops reached Qatana, which is 10 kilometers into Syrian territory east of a demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria,” the publication reported.
Israeli officials denied those claims, saying that they are “completely incorrect. IDF forces are present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border.”
Like Katz, the IDF spokesmen offered no timeline for when Israel will withdraw its ground forces from Syria.
Regardless of how far Israel has pushed into Syria, its actions have been widely condemned by the U.N. and neighboring nations.
Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have condemned Israel’s incursion, accusing it of exploiting the disarray in Syria and violating international law, The Associated Press reported.
Turkey, a major backer of anti-Assad forces, also condemned Israel’s advance. The Turkish Foreign Ministry accused Israel of “displaying a mentality of an occupier” at a time when the possibility of peace and stability had emerged in Syria.
On Monday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Israel’s incursion constitutes a violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement and called on both Israel and Syria to uphold it.
Meanwhile, Israel released new details and video on Tuesday of its air and naval offensive against the remnants of Assad’s military.
“Within the last 48 hours, the IDF struck most of the strategic weapons stockpiles in Syria, preventing them from falling into the hands of terrorist elements,” the IDF said on Telegram.
IAF and the Israeli Navy carried out “over 350 strikes during the operation,” Times of Israel military reporter Emanuel Fabian stated on Twitter.
The military estimates that it destroyed ”70-80% of the former Assad regime’s strategic weapons,” he reported.
“The waves of airstrikes carried out by IAF fighter jets and drones hit Syrian air defense systems, airbases, weapon depots, and weapon production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra,” he explained, “The IDF says the airstrikes destroyed many long-range projectiles, Scud missiles, cruise missiles, coast-to-sea missiles, air defense missiles, fighter jets, helicopters, radars, tanks, hangars, and more. The Israeli Navy’s strikes at the Minet el-Beida bay and Latakia port on the Syrian coast destroyed 15 Syrian naval vessels.” You can read more about the Navy’s assault in our story here.
In addition to actions taken by Israel, the new Syrian government is also faced with the protracted fight between Turkey and Kurds taking place in the north near the Turkish border.
“Turkish proxies, with support from Turkish airstrikes, advanced today toward the town of Kobani,” AL Monitor reported. “They began their push after seizing control of Karakozak, a bridge that connects the western and eastern banks of the Euphrates River, despite fierce resistance from Kurdish forces.”
The attacks come as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed vows to crush “terrorist organizations such as ISIS and the [Kurdish Workers Party] PKK/PYD in other parts of the country as soon as possible,” AL Monitor explained.
Meanwhile, about 20 miles to the south, the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have withdrawn from Manbij in their ongoing fight against the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), the Kurdish Rojava Information Center (RIC) stated on Twitter Tuesday.
“Turkey and its militias are now trying to reach the Tishreen dam,” RIC explained. “There are a lot of attacks against Tishreen and the dam, with SDF fighting the SNA outside Tishreen at present. They are using heavy weapons and there are Turkish drones in the air.”
SDF released video of drone attacks on Turkish forces.
The group also claims to have shot down a Turkish uncrewed combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), which you can see in the following video.
The fighting there may be drawing to an end.
The SDF Syria’s Turkey-backed rebels reached a ceasefire agreement in Manbij through a U.S. mediation “to ensure the safety and security of civilians,” SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said early on Wednesday local time.
“The fighters of the Manbij Military Council, who have been resisting the attacks since November 27, will withdraw from the area as soon as possible,” Abdi added.
How long that ceasefire holds remains to be seen.
In addition to the fights up north, ISIS continues to present a deadly threat.
The terror group’s cells “executed 54 members of regime forces near Kaziya in Al-Sukhna area in Homs Desert,” SOHR reported.
The ISIS cells also arrested members who fled from the military service in the desert and Deir Ezzor after the regime of Al-Assad fell, according to SOHR.
As we previously reported, over the weekend, the U.S. launched a massive series of airstrikes against ISIS, hitting over 75 targets using multiple U.S. Air Force assets, including B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s, according to U.S. Central Command.
Claims are now emerging about how Assad fled the country with a fortune.
We recently told you about Assad’s massive bunker and huge car collection, riches he amassed while his people starved. Now that he is supposedly in Russia, claims have emerged that Assad transferred $135 billion in assets during his escape, the Turkish Turkiye Gazetesi news outlet reported on Tuesday.
“The Assad family transferred the nation’s resources into their own pockets during the years of civil war,” former intelligence officer Khalid Beyye told the publication. “As the regime collapsed, they took a large portion of the country’s economy with them.”
The former Syrian dictator’s flight to Moscow spurred the mocking ire of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country is defending a nearly three-year-old full-on invasion by Russia that contributed to Assad’s demise.
“The ‘brave’ Assad ran away to Putin,” Zelensky chided on Twitter. “Where will Putin run away?…Assad and Putin are more than just vassal and lord. They are accomplices in violence. Dictators like Assad cannot survive without dictators like Putin. And Putin will try to get revenge for Assad’s fall.”
Zelensky noted that his message came on Human Rights Day and was quick to point out the horrors of the deposed Syrian dictator’s infamous prisons, “which were opened after Assad ran away. People have been humiliated there for many years. Men and women. They were beaten, tortured, raped. Thousands upon thousands of people have passed through this violence factory.”
Terrible scenes emerged as people arrived at the Saydnaya Prison to rescue inmates, many political opponents imprisoned for years.
Administrators, guards, judges, and prosecutors who worked at the prisoner were rounded up. Their fate remains unknown.
The Assad regime’s collapse has raised hopes that more information could come to light on the whereabouts of journalist Austin Tice, believed to be alive more than 12 years after his kidnapping.
Tice, a Marine veteran and freelance journalist, disappeared on Aug. 14, 2012, while he was reporting on the Syrian civil war. Weeks later, a short video appeared online that showed a distressed Tice blindfolded with his apparent captors. It was the last time he was seen.
President Joe Biden expressed optimism that Tice could be returned to the U.S. in the wake of Assad’s fall.
“We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet,” Biden said at the White House Sunday. “We have to identify where he is.”
Biden previously said the U.S. knows “with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime.”
On Tuesday, White House National Security Advisor John Kirby cautioned that the U.S. “has no additional information on Austin Tice.”
“This development could present an opportunity for us to glean more information about him, his whereabouts, his condition, but as you and I are speaking here this morning, I can’t report that we have any additional context,” Kirby told reporters, including from The War Zone, at a press briefing.
Despite the major setback Assad’s fall represented to Iran, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) maintains his forces are unbowed. Tehran’s power is “impervious to the Syria situation,” the official Iranian Press TV news outlet reported Tuesday on Telegram.
Hossein Salami “says Iran is vigorously pursuing the downfall of the occupying Zionist regime, stressing that Iranian Armed Forces have the enemies’ strategic and vital interests in West Asia in the crosshairs,” according to Press TV.
As fighting rages elsewhere, HTS placed billboards up around Aleppo, the first city captured from Assad’s forces. The billboards serve as a reminder of the force trying to establish a government.
Meanwhile, as new Syrian leader Mohammed al-Bashir settles into his first day in office, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out four conditions the Biden administration has for recognizing Assad’s successor government.
“The transition process and new government must also uphold clear commitments to fully respect the rights of minorities, facilitate the flow of humanitarian assistance to all in need, prevent Syria from being used as a base for terrorism or posing a threat to its neighbors, and ensure that any chemical or biological weapons stockpiles are secured and safely destroyed,” Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday.
However, barring any serious outbreak of violence or assassination, Bashir will outlast the Biden administration. U.S. relations with Syria will be in the hands of Donald Trump by the time Damascus transitions to more permanent leadership.
While Trump, as we have previously reported, wants the U.S. to stay out of Syria, recent events offer him an important geopolitical moment to seize upon.
“President-elect Donald Trump has an opportunity to find ways of working with [the new Syrian government] to gain leverage against Iran and Russia,” Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, recently told Politico. “America has wanted a Sunni-led state in Damascus in order to hurt Iran. And Russia. And it’s now got it, right? So you know — why bite the hand that you wanted now?”
We will know more about how Trump plays this hand after his inauguration.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com