Middle East war dynamics shift as global conflict turns more deadly

Leading analyst says the challenge for warring parties in the region has fundamentally changed as a result of reverses for the Iranian camp

A Hayat Tahrir Al Sham guard collects the weapon of a former security guard at the Baath party offices in Damascus

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Iran faces a struggle to rebuild its links to regional allies after the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and the collapse of the Syrian regime to a sworn enemy of Tehran, according to analysts at a leading strategic think tank.

Iran is unlikely to abandon its policy of building up non-state armed groups that had become the dominant source of fighters on the battlefields of the Middle East, according to John Raine, the senior adviser for Geopolitical Due Diligence at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

After a spiral of increasingly deadly fighting in the Middle East there has now been a fundamental shift. Iran's failure to shore up the collapsing regime of Bashar Al Assad was the latest, perhaps decisive, blow to the dominance of Iranian-backed groups across the region.

For Iran the challenge is that the leading group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham rode to victory on a narrative of resisting Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in Syria. Hayat Tahrir is set to target a patchwork of Iran-backed groups as it seeks to pacify Syria. "It will consider them hostile and it may be they will put up some resistance," he said. "We should not underestimate how many of these groups there are."

Launching a report that documented 89 non-state armed groups in the Middle East, Mr Raine said it was "praying for a miracle" – that the organised, capable and battle-hardened rival factions in Syria would not resume direct conflict as events play out.

Hezbollah's isolation from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is another decisive factor. "The keystone in the arc of resistance, Hezbollah, has almost collapsed as a result of two things. One, [Israel's offensive] which has been at an unprecedented level of intensity and accuracy. And secondly is the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria.

"Syria was geographically essential in order to resupply Hezbollah, and it was ideologically essential to Iranians, because it was, for the best part of 40 years, their only serious Arab state-level ally." Of the two key factors that have affected the fate of Iran's network of influence, Hayat Tahrir's hatred of Hezbollah stems from the legacy of working as direct adversaries on Syria's civil war front lines. "That rivalry could be very damaging to them."

For European and US leaders looking at how to deal with Hayat Tahrir's leading role in Syria, Mr Raine thought there were lessons from failures of the approach taken after the Taliban seized Kabul in 2022. He said it was important not to close off potential involvement, particularly in addressing the needs of Syrians at a time of deep crisis.

"There will inevitably be areas in which we should seek to co-operate," he said. "Ongoing humanitarian relief for the huge numbers of returning Syrians, displaced people and just standing up to the state. The big issue is territorial integrity," he added. "Behind the scenes diplomatically we should do whatever in ensuring we get a unified Syrian government. That to me will be legitimate grounds to deal with it."

More deadly

The stakes for a region scarred by intensifying wars could not be higher. The triggering of the war in Israel and Gaza had already pushed the number of violent deaths in the year between July 2023 and June 2024 to a fourfold rise across the Middle East and North Africa.

Global armed conflicts turned more deadly as a result of the spread of non-state armed groups. The report said nearly 200,000 people were killed during the period between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, amid surging violence in the Middle East, Sudan and interstate conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

"The rivalries between Western allies and its protagonists have returned to geopolitics with a vengeance, with Russia particularly keen to flex its muscles in areas around the world", the report said. "Established conflict resolution mechanism has been quietly undermined while international humanitarian law has become increasingly under attack."

Fatalities from violent events rose by 37 per cent year over year with an increase in the Mena region of over 315 per cent, according to the IISS Armed Conflict Survey 2024, which warned the events of October 7 drastically altered the dynamics in the Mena region.

The UN Security Council has struggled to maintain global peace and security due to internal divisions fuelled by geopolitical fragmentation which has added to the failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and Sudan, the IISS report claims. It also noted that the wars in Sudan and Gaza have been marked by violations of international humanitarian law by all involved parties.

"In both conflict theatres, state and non-state armed actors (NSAGs) have shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives, leading to alarming levels of forced displacement (including 90 per cent of Gazans and 7.7 million internally displaced Sudanese).

"These violations include the use of lethal violence in proximity or against civilians, blocking humanitarian aid deliveries, reportedly using food insecurity as a weapon of war, and – particularly in Gaza – the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in urban areas."

Non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah remained more geopolitically relevant than ever, with at least 455 armed groups of humanitarian concern operating globally in July 2024, with approximately 210 million people living under their full or contested control.

The think tank also warned that the chances to an end to the war in Ukraine remained "remote", even as the election of US president-elect Donald Trump had opened up the prospect of ceasefire talks.

"The two sides remain far apart on any possible peace terms while a durable settlement would require a host of wider political, legal, economic and security questions to be resolved, including the potential for reparation payments to Ukraine, the future of frozen Russian assets, accountability for war crimes, the return of Ukrainian citizens deported to Russia and the structure of future security guarantees."