Syria in 2025: Reconfiguring Its Position Between the United States, Russia, Iran, and Israel
By General (Rtd) Corneliu Pivariu
I. Syria 2025 – Introduction and General Strategic Context
In 2025, Syria re-emerges at the center of the Middle East strategic equation, yet in a radically different form from what the international community had grown accustomed to over the last quarter-century. The collapse of the order established by the Assad regime, the disintegration of the regional networks that supported it, and the rapid realignment of external actors have transformed the Levant into a fluid space undergoing a profound transition—one that is reshaping not only regional balances but also the parameters of global security. Syria is no longer the epicenter of a frozen conflict, but rather the pivot of a broader strategy through which Washington seeks to rebalance the Middle East amid its gradual withdrawal from acting as the direct guarantor of regional order.
Three recent developments have accelerated this paradigm shift. The first is the end of the confrontation in Gaza[1], a moment that reconfigured the regional balance of power and decisively weakened Iran’s influence in the Levant by destroying a significant part of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure and eliminating the operational Iranian logistic corridor through Syria—its essential mechanism for supply and strategic projection.
The second development is Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington[2], the first official visit of a Syrian head of state[3] to the United States since Syria’s declaration of independence following the end of the French Mandate. It signals clearly the new Syrian leadership’s orientation toward international legitimacy through distancing from Tehran and repositioning itself closer to Washington and Ankara.
The third major paradigm shift, with direct impact on the Syrian file, is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the United States—a visit that marked Riyadh’s re-anchoring in its strategic relationship with Washington[4] after years of ambiguity, bilateral tension, and attempts to rebalance toward China. Saudi Arabia is once again assuming its role as a pivotal actor in the Middle Eastern security architecture and, implicitly, as the principal Arab guarantor of Syria’s reintegration after Assad. In the post-Gaza context and amid Damascus’s repositioning, Saudi Arabia’s return to the U.S. strategic orbit consolidates the emerging regional framework, limits Iran’s maneuvering space, and counterbalances Turkey’s growing influence over northern Syria.
This geopolitical shift reflects a pragmatic strategic logic: if the United States seeks to reduce its direct military footprint, it must build a regional system of responsibility-sharing in which local actors assume part of the burden of stability and security. From this perspective, a stabilized, reoriented Syria—integrated into a framework of cooperation with Turkey, Israel, and the Arab states—becomes a key element for preventing Iran’s return, reducing the need for direct U.S. presence, and facilitating the emergence of an autonomous regional architecture.
Parallel to this external repositioning, Syria faces severe internal structural fragility. The collapse of the Assad regime did not produce a robust institutional transition, but rather created a power vacuum managed through an arrangement dependent on Ankara. This reality reflects the Syrian state’s inability to function independently after more than four decades of personalized rule and deep reliance on Iranian military, financial, and ideological support. Iran’s strategic setback after Gaza, amplified by growing international isolation, has left Syria without its principal external pillar of support, forcing the search for alternatives.
Thus, in 2025 Syria finds itself in a dynamic process of accelerated repositioning: between the need for external legitimacy, Turkish pressure, Washington’s expectations, and the constraints imposed by Israel—all superimposed on the reality of an economy in collapse, an exhausted population, and a political elite only now emerging following the disappearance of the old system.
In this context, Russia’s influence has diminished drastically. Unlike in 2014–2018, when Moscow could project power, manage Syrian airspace, and protect the Assad regime, Russia in 2025 is a militarily weakened, internationally isolated, and financially strained actor, preoccupied with its own front in Ukraine. Its role has become secondary—almost symbolic—and its ability to shape Syria’s trajectory has declined in parallel with the deterioration of its global position.
At the same time, Iran is experiencing its most severe strategic setback in two decades, having lost its operational levers in Syria and the critical connections that sustained Hezbollah. The elimination of the land corridor between Tehran and the Mediterranean, the destruction of missile depots in Lebanon, the weakening of Quds Force capabilities, and regional isolation have dismantled what was once the “axis of resistance.” The new Syrian leadership neither seeks nor is capable of returning to such an arrangement.
By contrast, Israel enters a phase of reorganized power, with its priorities recalibrated around two objectives: preventing Iran’s return to Syria and managing the risks associated with Turkey’s rise as the dominant actor in northern Syria. The emergence of a Sunni Syrian regime supported by Turkey is not a comfortable scenario for Tel Aviv, but it is considerably preferable to an Iranian one. Consequently, Israel is pursuing a pragmatic understanding with Ankara and Washington, aimed at ensuring a minimum framework of stability and preventing the military strengthening of potentially hostile groups.
Overall, Syria in 2025 becomes the testing ground of a strategic experiment: can a former clientelist dictatorship, devastated by a decade of war, be integrated into a new regional architecture that allows the United States to gradually withdraw without creating a new security vacuum?
This is the central question guiding the calculations of regional and global actors:
Turkey sees Syria as the main arena for its neo-Ottoman project;
the United States seeks a viable model of burden-sharing;
Israel aims for a non-Iranian buffer zone;
the Arab states want Syria reintegrated into a predictable order;
Russia and Iran strive, each in its own way, to limit their losses.
Consequently, Syria is no longer merely a crisis file—it is a geopolitical key to understanding the future order of the Middle East.
II. Main Strategic Directions of the Syrian Transition
1. Identity, Religion, Legitimacy, and the Disintegration of the Iran–Syria–Hezbollah Axis
The reconstruction of post-Assad Syria cannot be understood without examining the new identity and religious equation that is beginning to take shape as the Iran–Syria–Hezbollah axis — the structure that sustained Iranian influence in the Levant for more than two decades — progressively erodes. For years, the Assad regime relied on three external pillars: Iranian military and financial support, Hezbollah’s capabilities, and the political-military umbrella provided by Russia. Within only a few years, all of these pillars have been deeply weakened, but Iran is the actor that has suffered the most severe setback, with structural implications for Syria’s future.
The confrontation in Gaza accelerated this transformation. The degradation of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure[5] — the elimination of missile depots, the loss of its leader and of many senior and operational cadres, and the disruption of logistical flows — has turned the organization from an offensive actor into a defensive one focused on survival. This evolution decisively limits Tehran’s ability to project strategic influence to the Mediterranean and directly affects its leverage in Syria.
At the same time, Syria is undergoing a subtle but profound shift in internal legitimacy. After five decades of political and institutional dominance by the Alawite minority, the new geopolitical and demographic environment favors the emergence of a pragmatic Sunnism, less ideologically charged, oriented toward stability, regional reintegration, and international recognition. Within Syria’s elites, a slow but perceptible consensus is emerging: the survival of the state requires an identity reset in which sectarianism can no longer serve as the exclusive foundation of power.
The new confessional balance does not imply the marginalization of minorities, but rather a return to the natural structure of Syrian society, in which the Sunni community represents nearly two-thirds of the population. The emerging model is one of pragmatic governance, oriented toward consensus and stability, where religion reduces its role as an instrument of domination and takes on a function of communal identity managed through coexistence.
This reshaping of legitimacy has generated the emergence of new aspirational groups inside Syria: Sunni economic elites from Aleppo and Hama, moderate administrative cadres from Damascus, and technocrats marginalized over the past two decades. Together, they form the nucleus of a new political class interested in Syria’s reintegration into the Arab system and in rebalancing its relations with Turkey, the Arab states, and the United States.
Overall, this axis reveals the foundational elements of Syria’s transformation: the dissolution of the Iranian model of control, the rise of a moderate Sunni political identity, and the emergence of an elite seeking integration into the regional order rather than resistance against it.
2. The Military-Strategic Dimension of Syria After the Collapse of the Assad System
If identity and legitimacy define the symbolic framework of change, the military dimension is the arena where transformation manifests most directly. Post-Assad Syria is a state in which the traditional army has been practically dismantled, and the positions it once occupied have been filled by external actors with divergent agendas.
The first fundamental element is Iran’s retreat. For the first time since 2013, Tehran no longer has the operational capacity to maintain military infrastructure in Syria. The Iraq–Syria–Lebanon logistical network has been largely neutralized, the Quds Force no longer enjoys freedom of movement, and pro-Iranian militias have lost cohesion. Without a strong Syrian ally and an efficient proxy network, Iran has become a marginal actor.
Russia, for its part, has drastically reduced its military presence. The Hmeimim airbase[6] functions more as a vestige of a bygone era than as a genuine center of power. A similar situation exists at the Tartus naval base[7]. The resources required for major operations are lacking, and Moscow’s influence on internal dynamics is minimal. Syria is no longer a primary strategic theater for Russia but rather a secondary file managed with minimal resources.
In this vacuum, Turkey has become the de facto main military actor in northern and northwestern Syria. Ankara controls key territories, manages local militias, oversees security infrastructures, and supports the reorganization of Syrian forces aligned with the al-Sharaa regime. Its regional ambitions transform Turkey into the informal architect of the new security order in northern Syria, making its role indispensable in the current strategic environment.
Israel, in parallel, has acquired extensive operational freedom in southern Syria[8], which it uses not only to prevent the reinstallation of Iranian infrastructure and maintain a strategic buffer zone, but also to indirectly influence Syria’s internal dynamics. Through selective support to certain local communities — particularly segments of the Druze in Jabal al-Druze and in areas near the border — Israel seeks to exert pressure on Iranian presence and on the regime’s capacity to control the south. This type of influence projection, tacitly tolerated by Washington and Ankara, represents one of the major strategic evolutions in the Levant, as it combines freedom of military action with tools of political and social shaping at the local level.
The United States, finally, applies in Syria a strategy of “outsourcing order.” The stabilization of the country is delegated to a network of local actors — Turkey, Israel, and the Arab states — each with complementary roles. Washington does not seek to return militarily but to turn Syria into a laboratory for a new security model based on genuine burden-sharing.
This direction shows that Syria is no longer a chaotic battlefield but a strategic space in which regional actors exercise differentiated influence and overlapping interests.
3. Economic Reconstruction: Between Systemic Destruction and the Competition of External Actors
Syria’s economy enters the post-conflict phase in a state of structural collapse. After fourteen years of war, over 40% of urban and industrial infrastructure is destroyed, energy and transport networks function only partially, and total economic losses are estimated at 325–400 billion USD. The Syrian currency has lost 99% of its value. Agriculture — once one of the main sources of export before 2011 — has suffered a dramatic decline, with uncultivated land, devastated irrigation systems, and a significant reduction of the workforce due to mass migration. The chemical, textile, and pharmaceutical industries, once competitive, have been reduced to scattered enclaves controlled by various local actors.
In this context, Syria’s reconstruction is not merely a financial process but a strategic arena where regional and global interests collide. Iran, Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and, in specific sectors, China, seek preferential access to infrastructure projects, energy, ports, rail networks, and urban reconstruction. Yet many plans devised between 2017 and 2021 have become obsolete due to territorial changes or internal political instability. Damascus, confronted with severe international sanctions and a weakened administration, lacks the capacity to coordinate a coherent national reconstruction program.
Realistic estimates indicate that the reconstruction process[9] will require at least 15–20 years, beginning only once political and security stabilization is achieved — conditions that remain uncertain. In the absence of a broad international agreement and a functional institutional framework, Syria risks a “fragmented reconstruction” model, in which each external actor invests only in areas under its own control or influence. This would perpetuate the country’s economic fragmentation and turn reconstruction into a long-term geopolitical instrument.
4. The Regional Balance: The United States, Turkey, Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in the Game of Redesigning Syria
This axis concentrates the essence of the 2025 strategic dilemma: how can Syria become the pivot of a new regional system when the ambitions of the actors involved differ and their interests overlap only partially?
For the United States, Syria is the testing ground of a new paradigm: if a devastated state can be reintegrated through coordinated regional efforts, then the American withdrawal can continue without the risk of creating a new vacuum. The Syrian president’s visit to Washington symbolizes this pivot and Syria’s re-entry into the Western sphere.
For Turkey, Syria represents the core of its geopolitical project. Ankara does not seek total control but structural influence: reorganizing security policies, supporting Sunni networks, and maintaining key positions in the north allow it to shape Syria’s political and military architecture.
Israel views Syria as a space of controlled risk. Although a Sunni state supported by Turkey raises questions about long-term stability, it is preferable to an arrangement dominated by Iran. Thus, Israel pursues a strategy of minimal stabilization without political or military dependence.
Iran is the major loser. Economically weakened, internally contested, and deprived of the ability to project power in Syria and Lebanon, Tehran no longer possesses the essential instruments required to influence the Levant.
Saudi Arabia, supported by Pakistan, seeks to balance Turkey’s rising influence — not through military means but through economic resources and Arab legitimacy, both essential for the reconstruction process.
This direction shows that Syria is not merely the intersection point of competing interests, but the pillar on which the emerging new regional order is being tested.
III. Strategic Conclusion: Syria as a Pivot of the New Regional Order
In a remarkably short period, Syria has evolved from a collapsed state manipulated by external powers into the pivot of a regional strategy aimed at redefining the balance of power in the Middle East. This transformation does not stem from internal reforms, but from the convergence of three dynamics: the weakening of Iran and Russia, the pragmatic repositioning of Syria’s new leadership, and the shift in the American security paradigm toward the outsourcing of order.
For Washington, the success of integrating Syria into a regional cooperation system — led by Turkey and secured by Israel and the Arab states — represents the decisive test of a new model of controlled withdrawal.
For Turkey, Syria is the center of its regional ambitions.
For Israel, it is a space of manageable risk.
For Saudi Arabia, a field of counterbalancing.
For Iran and Russia, an almost irreversibly lost file.
For Syria itself, this is a rare opportunity to transform the external context into minimal internal stabilization and a gradual reintegration into the regional order.
In this sense, Syria becomes not just a foreign policy file, but an indicator of the future regional order in the Middle East — a test of the ability of local and global actors to sustain stability within an international system undergoing reconfiguration.
