Damascus, Syria - Security has been massively ramped up at Syria’s Masnaa crossing with Lebanon as the country fortifies its borders amid major regional turmoil brought about by the US-Israeli war against Iran.
At least three new checkpoints have been established for those who have just arrived from Lebanon, and searches of individuals' cars and travel papers have intensified.
This comes after Syria announced the deployment of thousands of additional troops to its borders with Lebanon and Iraq. Israeli media have also reported that Syria has moved large numbers of forces close to the Golan Heights.
Israeli security officials have condemned the move as in violation of the security arrangements between the two countries that prohibit Damascus from deploying large numbers of servicemen to the Israeli border.
Syria’s Ministry of Defence has said, however, that the current deployment does not represent a military escalation but is designed “to protect [Syria’s] borders and ensure national security”.
Syria once represented a key route for Iranian weapons and money to reach Hezbollah in Lebanon. Logically, the Syrian government would be wary that Iran and its proxies may seek to reopen transit routes through Syria that could risk pulling it into the regional conflict.
President Ahmed Al-Sharaa has been doing the rounds, calling neighbouring heads of state to reassure them that these troop movements are purely defensive in nature. On Friday, Al-Sharaa called Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and expressed “his support for the Lebanese people in these difficult times”.
He went on to assure Salam that Syria’s recent military deployments “were only intended to ensure control of the borders and to preserve Syria’s internal security, as had been done with Iraq”.
Invasion fears
Despite the president’s assurances, there are palpable fears that Syria seeks to exploit Lebanon’s current crisis following the renewal of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.
“Despite Syria adopting a ‘no enemies’ approach to its foreign policy, in reality the government still harbours grudges against some of its former opponents, in particular Iran and Hezbollah,” explains Sam Heller, an analyst for The Century Foundation specialising in Syria and Lebanon, to The New Arab.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” Iran’s attacks on the Gulf states but has yet to comment on Israel and the US’s attack on Iran.
Heller adds that “there have been persistent allegations from the Syrians that Hezbollah has been meddling in Syria over the last year”.
The Syrian government has accused the group of having links to cells that have launched rocket attacks against government officials in the Damascus neighbourhood of Mezzeh on several occasions.
Furthermore, the Lebanese and Syrian militaries have been involved in occasional border clashes around the Syrian town of Qusayr and the local Hezbollah-linked tribes, who are involved in the smuggling of drugs and weapons into Lebanon.
With such previous frictions, there is always a small risk that the current troop build-up could accidentally result in conflict being sparked.
This risk is only further heightened by Israel’s use of the occupied territories in southern Syria as a staging ground for raids into Lebanon. On Sunday, a helicopter raid by Israeli forces on the town of Nabi Chit, which killed 41 Lebanese civilians and three Lebanese soldiers, was initially launched from Syrian territory occupied by Israel.
A second similar Israeli raid launched from occupied Syrian territory on Monday was repelled by Hezbollah, with the group suggesting in a statement that Israel was seeking to use its positions in Syria to sever the Bekaa Valley from southern Lebanon.
“It will be crucial to watch how the Israelis engage in Syria as it relates to their war effort in Lebanon,” according to Heller.
“They view these as linked spaces with their occupation of Syria in part being designed around enabling action in Lebanon.”
A complicated history of mutual entanglement
The current fear is not spontaneous but is rooted in Lebanon and Syria’s complicated history of mutual entanglement, interference, and intervention.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, France was given suzerainty over what is now Syria and Lebanon under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Paris decided to carve out Greater Lebanon from its surrounding territories by merging Mount Lebanon - a majority Christian territory that for a long time had been afforded a large degree of autonomy under the Ottomans - with neighbouring mostly Muslim areas, including Tripoli, Tyre, and the Bekaa Valley. Under the Ottoman system, these territories had historically been overseen by the governor in Damascus.
Following the independence of both countries, pan-Syrian ideals, which saw both Lebanon and Syria as part of a greater Levantine nation, were a prominent undercurrent in both Syrian and Lebanese politics. The Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, whose parades and flags can still be seen in parts of west Beirut today, was founded in Beirut by Antoun Saadeh, seeking to unify the two states.
In 1975, during the Lebanese civil war, Hafez Al-Assad initially intervened on the side of Maronite Christians and soon became entangled in the kaleidoscopic politics of that decades-long quagmire. The Syrian occupation of Lebanon was to last until 2005, following the assassination of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and a groundswell of popular anger as a result.
Then in 2011, as Syria descended into a brutal civil war, millions of Syrian refugees sought refuge in Lebanon. By 2012, thousands of Hezbollah fighters had been ordered into Syria to fight on behalf of the ailing Assad regime.
However, following the fall of Assad in 2024, many Hezbollah fighters and their families fled the country en masse, with the group also providing refuge for many senior Syrian figures associated with the former regime.
A tense working relationship
Syria’s new government has adopted a working relationship with the Lebanese government, with its “main priority” being the return of Syrians detained in Lebanese prisons, “many of whom are directly associated with the new government through their links with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” explains Heller.
“The Syrians are also wary about the prominent role that Hezbollah plays in Lebanon’s domestic political sphere,” he adds.
“The Lebanese have their own misgivings about Syria’s new leadership and its historic links to militant Islamist groups,” says Heller. During the Syrian civil war, Lebanon weathered a number of bombings and attacks by such factions.
Yet despite the mutual suspicions, both sides have worked pragmatically over the last year in recognition of how intimately tied developments in each country are to the other.
A Syrian intervention in Lebanon remains unlikely. Few Syrians are keen for their new government to be involved in foreign entanglements, especially considering the Assad dynasty’s sordid history of such affairs.
Equally, Syria’s government has signalled little intent to do so, and in fact has only signalled the opposite. Any foreign intervention could risk sabotaging Syria’s hard-won diplomatic victories.
Compounding this is the reality that Syria itself remains extremely fragile. The integration of the SDF is still not complete, Islamic State (IS) attacks are resurgent, and the economy, whilst slowly beginning to recover, is still in its nascent stages.
Cian Ward is a journalist based in Damascus, covering conflict, migration, and humanitarian issues
Follow him on X: @CP__Ward
Edited by Charlie Hoyle