Will Hamas return to Damascus?

A few days after visiting Moscow last month, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, headed to Tehran with a bigger and higher-level delegation. The visit lasted several days, hinting at its importance, the greatest indicator of its significance being the number of Hamas officials in the delegation and their meeting with the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei and other senior officials.

The replacement of Hezbollah mediation by a personal delegation also suggests that Hamas is attempting to re-establish relations with the Syrian regime, an ally of Iran. Is Hamas planning to return to Damascus by normalising its relations with the regime?

It seems natural to ask this question, as there was apparently a close relationship between Hamas, Damascus and Tehran before the Syrian revolution. It is also a natural given the wave of normalisation of relations recently between a number of countries and the Assad regime in Syria.

It should be noted that a number of Hamas officials, both political and military, believe that leaving the Syrian capital was very costly for the movement on a political, economic and security level. Hamas is currently at a loss because neither Qatar nor Turkey are able to host its officials openly, as Damascus did before the start of the conflict there in 2011. Diplomatic statements by the movement have always claimed that leaving Syria did not affect the course of its work.

Hamas has been negotiating with the Syrian regime through Tehran since 2017 in order to return to Damascus, and based on the movement’s current political and security situation, it is said to be keen on going back to Syria. However, it seems that the regime of Bashar Al-Assad is being difficult about the matter, as it believes that Hamas has not supported it enough during the crisis, and thus did not “pay it back” properly. Hence, it seems that even if the regime is convinced about the return of Hamas — or is “persuaded” to be so by Iran — it is difficult to imagine things being as they were pre-2011.

In terms of timing, the geopolitical situation in Syrian is based on the rearrangement of all regional and international agendas in a manner conducive to it having influence equal to that of the opposition forces. This implicitly generates “geographical allocation” in which Hamas seeks to benefit from Tehran’s share. In what some observers describe as “political realism”, the movement is trying to return to Syria on the back of Tehran’s influence to ensure a suitable location for its ambitions to be realised.

Despite the Assad regime’s resentment towards Hamas and its position on the Syrian conflict, Tehran desperately needs a strong relationship with the Palestinian movement, not least so that it can still promote itself as being at the apex of the “axis of resistance”.

Moreover, Hamas’s pre-emptive step is being taken in the context of its concerns that Russia might give in to Israel’s demands for Hamas to be prevented from returning to Syria. This may happen if Iran’s influence in Syria is reduced, so Hamas is seeking to achieve what it needs before it is too late.

The visit to Tehran also addressed the current confrontation with the US in order to rescue whatever Palestinian rights might be possible in the face of the “deal of the century”. Hamas believes that cooperation with Russia and Iran will create an important axis to challenge US hegemony around the world. Another issue discussed was the mechanism for maintaining Iran’s support for the movement given the possibility of this declining due to US sanctions imposed on Tehran.

In conclusion, Hamas and the “axis of resistance” have mutual interests that prompt them to seek to maintain strong relations with each other. Hamas needs financial, political and geographic support in light of the harassment that the movement and the Palestinian cause are subjected to, while the “axis of resistance” cannot succeed in promoting itself as such without having a good relationship with the major Palestinian resistance group. On the basis of the mutual benefits available, therefore, the return to an open and strong relationship, as was the case in the past, is not all that difficult to imagine.

Washington’s weak hand in Syria

by Tony Cartalucci

With Damascus and its allies firmly in control of Syria’s largest cities and the vast majority of Syrian territory west of the Euphrates – not only has the US-led proxy war against the nation failed, the return of additional territory under Damascus’ control seems all but inevitable.

However, the US still holds territory east of the Euphrates, and – as American policymakers like to gloat – much of Syria’s oil wealth falls within this territory illegally occupied by US troops.

There is also the northern city of Idlib and surrounding countryside – the future of which is still unclear due to the presence of Turkish forces and Ankara’s ever-shifting agenda and alliances.

Each side involved in the proxy war has pursued a number of policies – diplomatic, political, and military in nature – to strengthen their positions before the war finally concludes.
For Damascus and its allies, decisive victories across western Syria have served as the central pillar of Syria’s victory over the foreign-backed militancy. Diplomatic efforts both within Syrian borders and beyond them continue and also play a significant role in ending the war in all of Syria’s favor – even including many groups involved in opposing the government now being offered amnesty and reconciliation.

The United States – stretched by global wars of aggression, decades-long military occupations, and significantly diminished geopolitical clout – finds itself depending more on political ploys than producing any meaningful military or diplomatic leverage.

Staged chemical weapon attacks and increasingly absurd and equally baseless accusations of human rights violations now stand in where American military might once stood.

The repetitive nature of such ploys feeds into a circular process that both exposes Washington’s impotence and serves to exasperate it. Despite this – Washington and its many functionaries across political, diplomatic, and information spheres – continue feeding into this process. Thus, while the US still has forces in Syria, and continuously seeks to not only sabotage peace in Syria – but infect Iran with the same strain of proxy war but to no avail– patient persistence by Damascus and its allies will see to Washington’s complete failure both in Syria and the wider Middle East.

As America’s proxy war in Syria continues to unravel, Washington continues to seek what leverage it can. This includes headlines flooding news cycles attempting to blame the bloodshed in Syria on the current government headed by President Bashar al Assad, and depicting Damascus as ruled by a “brutal regime.” Washington hopes to poison the Syrian government’s image to the point that any political settlement involving President Assad’s continued rule is unthinkable.

Yet, with each ploy, the US and its allies simply reaffirm that not only was the opposition in Syria manufactured abroad as was the war they helped trigger in 2011, so too is the humanitarian component of America’s pretext for remaining involved in Syria.

The Independent’s article, “The brutality of the Syrian regime must be told,” is an apt example of this.

The article is written by Amina Khoulani – founder of “Families for Freedom” – one of many UK-based fronts posing as human rights advocacy groups – but is in reality just one of many components in the West’s propaganda war against Syria.

Families for Freedom’s website admits it is “supported” by Women Now for Development and The Syrian Campaign– all in turn funded by Western corporate-funded foundations and the very Western governments who conspired to overthrow the Syrian government and were complicit in arming and funding militants sent into Syria to do so.

In reality – even by the US State Department’s own admission – terrorist organizations like Jabhat Al Nusra were already active in every major Syrian city by the end of 2011. Syrian forces were not rounding up peaceful activists and bombing protesters – they were fighting armed terrorists and arresting those providing them material support.

The abuse of human rights advocacy illustrated by Khoulani’s propaganda campaign served a central role in the Syrian war since it began in 2011. By Washington’s own admissions, the proxy war against Syria was planned long before 2011, with militant groups groomed, armed, and funded as early as 2007. The protests merely served as a smokescreen for the start of foreign-sponsored armed subversion.

Claims of human rights abuses were used as a pretext by the US and its NATO allies to invade and destroy Libya that same year. A similar and what Washington had hoped would be a swift repeat of the Libyan war was aimed at Syria. Many of the Western-armed militants who fought in Libya were even transferred to Syria, entering via Turkey and participated in the seizure of Idlib and much of Aleppo.

In essence, it was the United States and its allies who committed premeditated crimes against humanity – engineering a destructive war that has consumed all of Libya and much of Syria since 2011. Through the use of the West’s still potent media monopolies – public perception is still being shaped to believe that the victims of Washington’s serial acts of armed aggression are actually the perpetrators. They tried to form the picture so that the Syrian government and its allies fighting against foreign-sponsored armed extremists are “brutal dictatorships” and terrorist organizations and those supporting them are “activists” and “freedom fighters!”

Articles like Khoulani’s appearing in the Independent seek still to shape public perception, to wring whatever leverage still remains from an otherwise tired, battered, and abused “humanitarian” pretext. By continuing to expose these alleged “human rights advocates,” who funds them, and to what end, it may be possible to protect the legitimacy of genuine human rights concerns and how the former poses as the greatest danger to the latter. For the Syrian conflict, as it reaches its conclusion we can expect the US to continue rolling out political ploys particularly in the form of propaganda couched behind “humanitarian concerns.” Barring any drastic and risky military escalation – the US has few other cards left. Its “humanitarian” card is unlikely to wrest concessions in Washington’s favor and the continued, repetitive abuse of this card only further undermines this ploy elsewhere it is used by American policymakers.

That was from an article by Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.