It was, so to speak, a perfect storm of events that brought the Al-Assad regime in Syria down. While it seems to have unfolded at a fast pace, preparations were a long time in the making. The distractions and weakening of the Assad regime’s main backers — Russia and Iran — and the alliance among the various warring parties in Syria gradually created the opportunity to depose Bashar Al-Assad and end the Ba’athist regime. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the severe damage to Iran’s capabilities — including its proxies that form the so-called Axis of Resistance, particularly Hezbollah — in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks pushed the final set of dominos to fall. Assad’s removal is a direct challenge to the influence of Iran and Russia in Syria as it denies them safe haven on the Mediterranean Sea and cripples their operations in the Middle East and Africa. With Assad gone, Russia might lose its prized military bases on the Mediterranean, which were key for its deployments of weapons and mercenaries across Africa, while Iran loses its Shia Crescent running through Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, being denied the ability to resupply its proxies, most notably Hezbollah and Hamas. And, while many in Europe and the Gulf welcome Assad’s removal, there are concerns about the leading role of the former Al Qaeda-affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the potential of establishing a Taliban-style radical Islamist government in Syria as well as about the effect on the security of neighbouring Iraq, the remaining stronghold of Iran.

The toppling of the Assad regime came as a surprise to many as some countries have gradually began to accept that it had survived the civil war intact and tried to find ways to engage with it to deal with certain pressing issues while not fully normalising relations with it. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the European Union (EU) began a cautious diplomatic rapprochement with the Assad regime in recent years. The EU returned its Chargé d’Affaires to Damascus in September 2024. Italy appointed their Ambassador to Syria in July 2024 and together with and other EU countries Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, and Slovenia sought to push for ending the regime’s isolation with a view of addressing certain issues, including the return of Syrian refugees from Europe. Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hungary and Greece already quietly restarted their diplomatic presence in Syria in some capacity a few years ago.

Syria’s return to the Arab League in 2023, which could not happen without the support of all six GCC countries, came amid a wider regional push for deescalation and concerted efforts to weaken Iran’s stranglehold on Syria, Iraq and Lebanon diplomatically and economically. Over the years, the GCC countries have followed different strategies for Syria and despite the diplomatic reconciliation, most Gulf countries remained highly suspicious, wary that the regime was saved and then sustained by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia and was over the years used as a safe haven for activities that directly undermined GCC security. Post-civil war Syria under Assad, together with Lebanon, became a source of large scale drug smuggling to the GCC, particularly amphetamines like captagon, where Europe emerged as a key transiting hub. The efforts to curb the flow of drugs from Syria is also what partially motivated the Gulf countries to engage with Assad, who used it as a leverage to make his way back to the Arab fold. Syria was also an important hub for planning activities of Iran’s Axis of Resistance by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, with some of its senior officials killed in multiple Israeli airstrikes in Damascus since December 2023.

The new EU High-Representative for Foreign and security Policy, Kaja Kallas, welcomed the end of Assad’s regime ‘as a positive and long-awaited development’ that ‘shows the weakness of Assad’s backers, Russia and Iran’ and vowed to work with all ‘constructive partners’ to ensure security in the region. The situation in Syria was also on the top of the agenda during Kallas’ first official phone call with the United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Minister, Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, on 9 December 2024, signalling a coordination on how to support the political transition.

It is a shared security interest for the GCC and the EU to ensure that Russia and Iran lose their foothold in Syria as it will weaken their positions internationally and affect also their military alliance and capabilities in other theatres. However, the Gulf countries and the EU should be both watching where will Moscow and Tehran turn next and how will the situation in Syria affect the influence of another key player — Türkiye. There should be concerted efforts to ensure that Syria does not become a failed state on the European and Gulf doorstep and that it is not taken over by radical Islamists. So far, it remains unclear how (dis)orderly the transition will be but recognising that the choice is not a binary one between a bad and a worse scenario — an illusive stability under Assad rule or a fundamentalist Islamic state — will help widen the toolbox with which the EU and the Gulf countries can deal with post-Assad Syria.