The Syrian insurgency will be felt across the Middle East and beyond

Editorial: Fears that the conflicts sparked by the 7 October attacks would embroil the region have, until now, proved unfounded – but the fall of Aleppo is a sign that simmering enmities are being exacerbated in ways that may yet have global consequences

It was, it turned out, too good to be true. Hopes that the ceasefire concluded between Israel and the Hezbollah militia could encourage further peace moves across the region have come to nought – but not in the way that might have been imagined.

Scarcely had the guns, missiles and drones across southern Lebanon been replaced by celebratory firecrackers than a conflict still simmering in the region, but largely forgotten by the Western world, suddenly burst into life again. Forces opposed to the rule of Bashar al-Assad swept into Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, and took control, raising their flag over the ancient citadel in triumph.

The speed of the rebel takeover was all the more astonishing given that the eastern part of the city was under siege from 2012 to 2016, with its capture by Assad government forces marking the beginning of the end of the civil war. Now, eight years on, the city that was so hard and so costly for Assad to retake has fallen back into the hands of the rebels, who are pressing further south amid unsubstantiated rumours of a coup.

How far the rebel advance could cause wider instability – with the reigniting of Syria’s bitter civil war spreading beyond its borders – and how far it is an effect of changing dynamics in the region as a whole, may become clearer in due course. As of now, it looks like a bit of both, and is all the more perilous for it.

Syrian forces, and their Russian backers, certainly appear to have been caught napping. Far from the capital, Damascus, as well as being adjacent to Idlib, the last Syrian region controlled by rebel forces, and close to the Turkish border, Aleppo was always vulnerable. Yet it was a full day before Syrian and Russian airstrikes were unleashed in response. Assad was reported to have been in Moscow at the time. Was that a coincidence, or was he aware of a threat and seeking help from his ally, Vladimir Putin?

But shifting power relationships surely played a part, too. While hailed by Hezbollah leaders as a victory, the ceasefire with Israel testified also to the losses the group had sustained and the weakness of its patron and sponsor, Iran. Tehran provided crucial support to Assad during the civil war, but internal strife in Iran and the effects of Western sanctions on living standards have taken their toll. The Syria-Iran bloc is not what it was.

Russia could also turn out to be less reliable an ally for Assad than in the recent past. Much though Putin might want to retain, even reinforce Russia’s foothold in the Middle East, through its air and naval bases in Syria, his country’s political and military focus is firmly fixed on Ukraine, where the endgame could be approaching. Its forces may currently have the upper hand in eastern Ukraine, but, with neither side within reach of its objectives, the fighting goes on. Nor is it evident that Russia has resources to spare.

To a weakened Iran and a distracted Russia must be added a disappointed US president looking to his legacy, and the imminent return to the White House of Donald Trump, with his all-too-predictable unpredictability. The jockeying for advantage that the anticipated handover has prompted is making this transition even more dangerous than it might otherwise be, in exacerbating existing conflicts and perhaps creating more.

Back at the fulcrum of the latest events, key factors in what might come next are the identity of the rebels who now claim control of Aleppo, the extent of their ambitions, and who might stand behind them. They appear to be led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which grew out of the al-Nusra Front, at one time affiliated to al-Qaeda and regarded, in an unusual consensus, as a terrorist group by Syria, Russia and the United States.

But many strands made up the anti-Assad rebels who retreated to Idlib, including jihadists of various stripes and forces from Turkey’s proscribed Kurdish opposition, the PKK. US Special Forces also operate in northern Syria, and the US has bases across the border in Iraq and on the Syrian border just inside Jordan, where three soldiers were killed and dozens injured in a drone attack at the start of this year. The dictum that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” makes for some strange bedfellows: allegiances shift, and CIA money is not unheard of.

After the Hamas massacres of 7 October and Israel’s devastation of Gaza, there were real fears that the conflict could escalate and embroil much of the Middle East. Mercifully, that has been avoided so far. But with US, Russian, Iranian, Turkish and Israeli interests all now clearly in play, and politics in the United States in flux, the risks are enormous.

This week’s Nato foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, where some of the key players, including the US, Turkey and the UK, will be represented – as well as France, which helped to broker the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire – offers a chance to lower the temperature. However tempting it might be for some – notably, but not exclusively, Russia – to exploit current uncertainties for their own ends, it must be hoped that the ministers choose to call for restraint, and that those calls do not fall on deaf ears.