The Syrian Web

Hamas is no longer in the Iran/Syria/Hezbollah fold.  Its leadership has taken umbrage against the Shia/Alawite-led attacks on the Syrian-Sunni population.  Hamas is now cut off from Iranian funding.  No problem, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is prepared to take up the slack.  Hamas, after all, is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, they make a more natural fit of affinity.

And Hamas has other, additional allies in Turkey and Qatar, both of which have begun funding Hamas.  Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels Hamas represents a sterling Islamic government, worthy of support.  All this support may just go to Hamas's head, encouraging it to embark on a new wave of 'resistance' against the Israeli 'occupiers' of Palestine.

On the other hand, Syria's allies in Lebanon have soulfully dedicated their well-armed and -trained militias to the ongoing support and control of Syria by President Bashar al-Assad.  Hezbollah is grateful to Syria for its faithful support and provision of arms, enabling it to assume control of Lebanon, in place of the occupation and control once exerted overtly by Syria.

The pairing of Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon effectively created a puppet state with the Lebanese occupied by a foreign presence, overseen by Iran.  Iran would find itself in a strategically awkward position with the loss of Syrian support in the case of a successful Sunni-led revolution removing the Alawite regime from power. 

"Hezbollah is at a point of enormous strategic uncertainty.  [Syria's uprising] is not an existential threat, they are too well armed.  But now they face a threat from two sides", a Western diplomat in Lebanon informed Reuters, in reference to a potentially hostile post-Assad Syria and Israel.  "What is happening now is fateful for them.  They do not have a choice; they are with the regime until the last minute.  This is a strategic alliance between Iran and Syria and they are part of it."

For its part, Turkey sees Iranian influnce waning in Iraq and is determined to move in, following the departure of President al-Assad. "Thus, just as the Iranians are in retreat, the Turks have an interest in, if not supplanting them, certainly supplementing them", with plans for pipelines in Iraq's oil fields in the south and in the north.

But all is not prospective sweetness and light for Turkey with the issues now broiling away in Syria.  Turkey's fears with the rise of Syrian Kurds and the prospect for them to involve themselves with the Kurdistan Workers Party terror group may yet prove destabilizing within Turkey. "The Turks will play a very key role in what type of post-Assad state exists in Syria ..."

Iran's concerns remain with its power of balance in maintaining its sphere of influence from Western Afghanistan to Lebanon.  "First, the wide-reaching sphere of influence they were creating clearly won't happen now. Second, Iran will rapidly move from being an ascendant power to a power on the defensive", according to an analyst with Stratfor, the U.S. global intelligence firm.

Iran's decline as a waning power would impact on Iraqi politicians to deflect Iranian influence in the country.  Iran's investment of troops, weapons and resources in the Alawite Assad regime will have been a well-planned and dependably-organized opportunity lost.

As for Israel, as fraught as its relationship has been with Syria rumbling its determination to launch another war with Israel if the Golan Heights are not returned, there was a standoff between the two; despite the belligerence, there was no matching action and an uneasy truce prevailed. 

"But the possibility of either an Islamist regime in Damascus or, more likely, Lebanese-style instability cannot please the Israelis", according to Stratfor's George Friedman.

"A change of regime, and certainly to a militant one, would not be to Israel's advantage, especially if the new Syrian regime would try to 'warm up' the border with Israel in order to divert public opinion from domestic problems", explained Jacques Neriah, former foreign policy advisor to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.