Altogether, however, it appears unlikely that such trends can significantly threaten the authority of the Islamic Republic, not least given that large percentages of the Iranian population remain dependent on state employment and the welfare system for their daily sustenance.

Aside from its internal crackdown, Iran has also launched repeated military strikes in Iraqi Kurdistan along its border, allegedly to target Kurdish groups involved in weapons smuggling into Iran. The possible militarization of the protests in Iran would carry further adverse effects and likely herald further violent repression by the security services. The authorities in Iran, meanwhile, predictably blamed external rivals – specifically the US and Israel – for fomenting the protests [International Crisis Group 2022b]. Relations between the West and Iran suffered as a result, particularly as proof emerged that Iran had indeed sold military drones and missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine, after the Iranian authorities repeatedly denied the existence of such sales [Hernández 2022]. Ultimately, these military sales and the ongoing repression of the protests, combined with the breakdown in JCPOA talks, appear to indicate that the conservative Raisi government has chosen to realign the country’s foreign policy towards Moscow and Beijing, irrespective of Iran’s traditional emphasis on maintaining a strategically independent position vis-à-vis both East and West [Hafezi 2022; Heiran-Nia 2022]. While a final bilateral meeting was held between EU and Iranian delegates in Amman during the second Baghdad Conference on regional cooperation in December [Motamedi 2022; Reuters 2022b], the prospects for a revival of the JCPOA remain slimmer than ever. Meanwhile, in Israel and the United States, calls for a «Plan B» vis-à-vis Iran have once again gained currency, promoting efforts that look beyond the JCPOA and instead seek to return to more offensive means of containment and antagonism towards Iran and its regional allies [Haaretz 2022; Schaefer 2022].

Together with the military strikes in Iraqi Kurdistan, the resumption of tanker seizures in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf ¶{p. 36}of Aden in late 2022 and the continuation of Israeli strikes in Syria, such developments all seem to point to the revival of tensions and offensive containment of Iran in the Middle East [8] . The collapse of the UN-mediated truce in Yemen and the return of Benjamin Netanyahu to power in Israel, following elections in November 2022, also contribute to this outlook [Al Jazeera 2022n]. The formation of a new, ultra-nationalist and far-right government in Israel does indeed foreshadow the resumption of more offensive means of containment of Iran, as well as a further hardening of repression in the occupied Palestinian territories, where 2022 has already represented a macabre record of Palestinian deaths by the Israeli army or settlers as well as the worrying resumption of limited attacks by Palestinian groups [Al Tahhan 2022; UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People 2022]. This hesitant return of forms of offensive containment and proxy conflict with Iran in the Persian Gulf, combined with the heightening of tensions across occupied Palestinian territory, does not bode well for the future. Any eruption of serious crises in either of these localities would carry significant implications for the broader region, potentially enflaming various regional hotspots and dragging other actors into a renewed era of offensive or hybrid conflict, from Iraq to Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. This in turn may hamper broader reconciliation processes in the region, formalize the beginnings of a new era of great power competition in the Middle East and scuttle the MENA’s already limited progress on key international commitments, from the energy transition and decarbonisation pledges to the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [9] .

Military developments within Syria over the past year have remained somewhat stable. The regime led by Bashar al-Assad ¶{p. 37}controls about 70 per cent of the country while other actors – Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States – as well as the Syrian Kurds, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and other opposition groups, maintain varying degrees of control in outlying regions, particularly along Syria’s northern, eastern and southern borders [10] . Syria has suffered huge economic, human and infrastructural devastations as a result of more than a decade of conflict [11] .

The regime’s uncompromising rejection of democratic reforms has condemned Syria to isolation and stringent international, particularly EU and US, sanctions. In combination with the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent Russian war in Ukraine, sanctions have led to a dramatic rise in inflation, a constant devaluation of the Syrian pound, the collapse of the economy and disastrous socio-economic and humanitarian conditions: 90 per cent of the population is living below the poverty threshold, 11 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid and 6.8 million have been displaced outside the country.

With regard to humanitarian conditions, concern was directed during 2022 to Russia’s continued politicisation of aid to rebel-held areas in Syria. This is particularly true for the Idlib governorate, where aid is delivered across the Bab al-Hawa crossing, the only delivery point still in operation after Moscow’s previous vetoes at the UN Security Council closed down other access points. Idlib receives considerable amounts of international aid from the UN and its specialised organisations. ¶{p. 38}

Over recent years, Russia has gradually vetoed the renewal of existing cross-border aid crossings, replacing them with cross-line aid (which is channelled from regime-controlled territories). In 2022, the expired UN mandate to deliver aid through the Bab al Hawa crossing was extended for six months instead of the expected twelve amidst Russian threats to eliminate it altogether by the end of 2022 in order to absorb it (after the three crossings eliminated in 2020) into the Damascus-controlled cross-line aid [12] . According to international and UN opinion, the cross-line system is much less effective than the cross-border one since it is open to widespread abuse by the government. Ultimately, such developments risk accentuating the dire humanitarian conditions in Idlib and broader areas of North-Western Syria outside regime control, where UN figures show that 4.1 million people are in need of assistance out of a total population of 4.6 million [Lister 2022a; International Crisis Group 2022a]. This may not only boost radicalization in Idlib [Taim 2022], but also increase tensions with Turkey, as Ankara is worried about new migration waves from Syria, particularly in the run-up to elections scheduled for June 2023.

Such concern increased significantly in May 2022, following repeated statements from Turkey of a possible new military incursion into Northern Syria. Ostensibly aimed at establishing a continuous 30-kilometre-deep «safety zone» within Syria along the Turkish-Syrian border so that Ankara could begin repatriating Syrian refugees based in Turkey, the underlying objective was also to rally Turks around the flag in the run-up to elections [Pierini and Siccardi 2022]. While the ground invasion never materialised due to the stern opposition from Iran, Russia as well as the US and Syria itself, Turkey has since reverted to seeking dialogue and some form of accommodation with the Assad regime via the Russian brokered Astana process [Aliboni 2022]. Having continued to cultivate Ankara’s «marriage of convenience» with Russia [Dalay 2022], Turkey appears to have been convinced to explore diplomatic engagements with Damascus, seeking political solutions to Turkey’s outstanding security concerns in Syria: ¶{p. 39}namely the future of the Kurdish enclaves. While the ground incursion was avoided, Turkish bombing raids have continued in Northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, particularly following a terrorist attack in Istanbul which Turkish authorities blamed on Syrian Kurds in November 2022 [Human Rights Watch 2022b].

It was in this context of seeking political accommodations with Damascus that the defence ministers of Turkey, Russia and Syria met in Moscow in late December to discuss developments in Northern Syria, with further trilateral meetings scheduled for early 2023 [Al Jazeera 2021; Reuters 2022d]. Representing the first direct meeting between high-level Turkish and Syrian officials since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011, this process of Turkish-Syrian realignment is part of broader Arab moves towards a normalisation of the Assad regime. These in turn build on earlier undertakings spearheaded by the UAE, which in March 2022 even hosted Syrian President Assad for a bilateral summit in Abu Dhabi, the first visit to an Arab state by the Syrian president in over a decade [BBC 2022]. Further examples of this push towards normalization with Syria are given by (the ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to restore Syria’s membership in the Arab League [Al Houssein 2022] and Jordan’s formal resumption of relations with Damascus in October 2022, which follows other engagements with Assad by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Oman and Bahrain in preceding years [Heydemann 2022; Ozcelik 2022; Tokmajyan 2021a]. The pre-eminent reason why many Arab states wish to re-engage Syria is the expectation, especially on the part of GCC states, that such action would contain, if not eliminate, Iran’s influence in the country. In this sense, Arab rapprochement with Syria is part of the wider political process whereby, on the one hand, the Arab countries are seeking, with the encouragement and support of the Biden administration, to build a large Middle Eastern security coalition vis-à-vis Iran (including Israel via the so-called Abraham Accords [El Yaakoubi, Mills and Spetalnick 2022; International Crisis Group 2022f]) and, on the other, to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East via political and not only military means.