Sedition on the coast
How Iran attempted to turn Syria’s coastal region into a protectorate

Western media largely attributed the March massacres in Syria’s coastal villages to sectarian tensions, the presence of foreign fighters and the Islamist leanings of Damascus’s new rulers. While all of these elements played a role, one critical dimension received little public scrutiny but was very real: Iran’s involvement in instigating the violence that left approximately 400 pro-government forces and at least 1,700 Alawite civilians dead. Also overlooked was the role Russia planned to play in the failed insurgency: transforming the coastal areas — once “liberated” from interim government control — into a Russian protectorate.

As rebel forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) advanced on Damascus last year, Tehran moved to mobilise Iraqi militias to reinforce Assad’s collapsing defences. However, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani reportedly refused to allow these militias to cross into Syria. Meanwhile, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli warplanes intercepted Iranian aircraft en route to Syria, preventing them from deploying troops intended to bolster Assad. His downfall was a crippling blow to Tehran’s regional position; honour dictates that Iran should at least attempt to sabotage the new regime. 

Destabiliser-in-chief
Over the past decade, Iran deepened its influence in Syria by cultivating close ties with elite army units – most notably the Republican Guard and the Fourth Division. The latter, commanded by Bashar Assad’s brother Maher, also functioned as a drug and money laundering cartel.

As the Assad regime began to unravel, reports emerged that large numbers of soldiers and officers from the Fourth Division had fled across the border into Iraq. While some eventually returned to Syria of their own accord after receiving amnesty from the Damascus government, a significant contingent of senior officers chose to remain in Iraq hosted by the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF.)

According to Iraqi media sources, Syrian officers took part in an operations room established by Iran in the aftermath of the Assad regime’s collapse. Its objective was to destabilise Syria by activating sleeper cells across the country and undermining the newly-formed government. The Turkish daily Türkiye Gazetesi reported that these officers also attended a secret meeting convened by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Najaf in early February, alongside Iranian generals and PMF leaders.

In mid-February, reports of high-ranking Syrian officers operating from Iraq to destabilise Syria sparked controversy and a flurry of speculation across Syrian and Iraqi social media. In response, government sources in Baghdad moved to reassure the Arab press, insisting that no “hostile activities toward Syria” were being conducted on Iraqi soil. But this was not entirely true. 

Four former members of the Syrian Arab Army and Assad’s intelligence services who spoke to Syria in Transition confirmed that Syria’s coastal violence began as a coordinated armed insurgency instigated by Iran. Though some details vary, there was consensus that Iran’s role in the operation consisted mainly of coordination and financing, believed to have been effected through its Quds Force, the clandestine wing of the IRGC specialising in unconventional warfare and military intelligence. Prior to the launch of the operation, meanwhile, actors linked to Iran conducted a large-scale disinformation campaign.

Old army, new tricks
There was broad agreement by the ex-Assad officers on the identities of the key figures in planning and carrying out the March insurgency. All were former members of the disbanded Assad military, including several former commanders of the Fourth Division. Ghiath Dalla, a former Brigadier General in the Fourth Division, was named as the primary planner of the operation. Dalla is believed to head the so-called “Military Council for the Liberation of Syria”, which declared its existence on social media on 6 March, vowing to “expel all occupying terrorist forces” from Syria and to “dismantle the repressive sectarian security apparatus.” 

In the past, Dalla was known as one of the leading supporters of the Iranian axis within the Assad regime. His forces cooperated closely with Iran-backed militias in Syria, such as Hezbollah and the Imam Hussein Brigade. Dalla’s unit was also notorious for its involvement in several mass atrocities in southern Syria and Idlib.

Miqdad Ftiha, a former commander in the Republican Guard, was identified as another key leader of the operation. Ftiha had caught the attention of Syria’s security authorities earlier this year through several videos posted on social media in which he urged Alawites to take up arms against the new Syrian government and declared the establishment of the Coastal Shield Brigade, an insurgent group.

In addition to verifying the presence of an Iran-led operations room in Najaf, multiple sources indicated the existence of a second operations room in Lebanon, located in Jabal Mohsen, a neighbourhood in the coastal city of Tripoli inhabited mostly by Alawites of both Lebanese and Syrian descent. The sources said that this operations room was commanded by a Quds Force operative named Ali Akbar Javad and comprised former members of the Assad regime and Hezbollah personnel. 

Zero hour
Roughly ten days before the armed operation, former Assad regime members who had been residing in Hezbollah-controlled areas in northern Lebanon crossed into Syria and moved on to Tartous. The insurgency was launched with near-simultaneous attacks on dozens of security bases in Tartous and Latakia governorates that caused the deaths of large numbers of Syrian security personnel.

The attackers demonstrated a high level of military training and expertise, which was evident from their use of advanced ambush tactics. The military and security personnel, by contrast, were ill-equipped to face sophisticated attacks, having only recently been incorporated into the state security system and having received minimal training.

The insurgents’ ultimate goal was to establish control of the coastal region, including the cities of Tartous, Latakia, Banias and Jableh, and call for Russian protection. They were in regular contact with Russian officers at Hmeimim air base, located 20 km south of Latakia. The HTS-run General Intelligence Directorate (GID) was able to intercept and record conversations between regime remnants and Russian officers at Hmeimim. According to those recordings, the Assad loyalists were told to hold on to the areas they had seized for 48 hours, after which Russia would intervene to protect them.

The militants achieved some initial success, managing to establish control over some parts of the cities of Latakia, Jableh and Banias. According to security sources, Syrian authorities had learned of the operations room in northern Lebanon and were expecting an attack but were unaware of its exact timing. Two security sources say that Ftiha brought forward zero hour because General Security was carrying out aggressive sweeps that threatened many of his sleeper cells hiding out in villages along the coast. 

In the end, the insurgency was a damp squib. It barely lasted 24 hours before massive pro-government reinforcements arrived from across Syria that entirely swamped the region. The insurgents withdrew to the mountains, leaving Alawite civilians to face the wrath of enraged Sunni fighters. 

Disinformation trail 
The coastal insurgency followed months of sectarian incitement on social media channels. A journalist named Wahed Yazbek, who previously worked as a correspondent for a pro-regime radio station in Homs, was named as one of the most prominent provocateurs, frequently sharing bogus claims of massacres of Alawites on his social media profiles to incite the Alawites to establish self-defence militias. Yazbek’s account on Facebook has 393,000 followers. 

The armed insurgency on the coast coincided with what researchers at Syrian fact-checking organisation Verify-Sy described as “Syria’s worst wave of disinformation” since the fall of the Assad regime. Much of the disinformation was spread by actors and channels linked to Iran, further underlining Tehran’s key role. According to the research group, online disinformation was aimed closely to influence events on the ground. In chat rooms and private messages actors hostile to the new Syrian government urged Syrian minorities to flee, warned of imminent genocide, and encouraged Alawite men to take up arms and attack security personnel.

Claims of a “Genocide against Alawites” were also spread on Telegram channels linked to the IRGC, accompanied by unverified videos purporting to show forces of the “Kharijite government of Jolani” slaughtering Alawites in Latakia. Deutsche Welle was able to speak to one social media user spreading such claims, whose profile said they were based in southern Iraq. The man told the German news channel that he was working under instructions from the media operations room of Iraq's PMF. "They give me the posts, and I publish," the social media user said. "I trust my leadership very much, and they are the ones who verify the news." 

Wrong path
The violence on Syria’s coast was both a security debacle of the new government (and an official investigation is underway) and a deeper moral failure. As the dust has settled, it has become clear that the Alawite community was drawn into a conflict not of its making, and from which it had little to gain. Those that embroiled the community in March were the self-same officers that had led tens of thousands of young Alawite men to their deaths in the civil war.