We are not surprised that officials in both Turkey and “the new Syria” have rushed to deny the Reuters report, citing six sources, that meetings took place in Turkey between representatives of the Syrian state and Hezbollah. Ironically, the party that ought to be rushing to deny the report is Hezbollah, rather than the Turkish and Syrian allies. These two allies urgently need such a meeting: Israeli military incursions into southern Syria are intensifying, while most Arab countries and other states have turned their backs on the authorities in Damascus and halted financial assistance, contributing to the current economic collapse and rising living costs.
By Abdel Bari Atwan
Hezbollah’s Silence and Damascus’s Deepening Crisis
What is striking is that Hezbollah, the stronger party in this equation and perhaps the one with the most to lose, has remained silent. It has made no comment whatsoever on reports of a meeting in Turkey with the new Syrian government, which is mired in crises. All that government’s meetings with the Israeli occupation authorities, and all its security concessions, have failed to halt Israel’s provocative incursions into occupied southern Syria.
One of the most conspicuous episodes was the visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war minister, Israel Katz, to the summit of Mount Hermon, occupied only recently, after the overthrow of the former Syrian government. They posed for photographs and issued statements affirming the Judaization of the mountain, whose slopes overlook southern Lebanon, and asserting that the occupied Golan Heights were “Israeli.” In an insolent response to interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s demand that the Golan be returned to Syria, Netanyahu told him that Jews had been present there thousands of years before Arabs and Muslims.
Recent days and weeks have exposed Israel’s increasingly aggressive expansion in Syria, alongside waning American support for the Syrian government and the withdrawal of its protective umbrella through the departure of all US forces and the dismantling of bases in Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Meanwhile, all Syria’s Arab backers have washed their hands of developments there and stopped their financial assistance. We have read how the journalist Moussa al-Omar, one of President al-Sharaa’s advisers, appealed to the Gulf states to provide $20 billion immediately to rescue Syria from a crushing financial crisis that threatens its collapse.
We cannot rule out the possibility that the leadership of “the new Syria” held this meeting with Hezbollah representatives in Turkey out of desperation and amid its financial and political crises. It may have been an attempt to send a desperate warning to the United States and the Arab states: unless they continue supporting Syria financially, militarily and diplomatically, it will return to the Axis of Resistance, enter into an alliance with Hezbollah and lift the ban on the smuggling of Iranian missiles and other military equipment to the movement, allowing them to pass unhindered. That would restore the situation that existed before the overthrow of the former Syrian government, the backbone of the Axis of Resistance.
Another development we cannot ignore lends considerable weight to the possibility that “the new Syria” and its interim president are opening channels with Hezbollah: the growing Syrian Islamic and national resistance to the Israeli occupation in southern Syria and the Yarmouk Basin. Hezbollah is supporting this resistance with fighters, weapons and combat expertise, while operational coordination between the two sides is increasing.
Abandoned After Serving Its Purpose
What is certain is that Hezbollah’s silence will not last. It will have its say on this matter, either denying or confirming the reports, and it stands to gain in either case. The most convincing explanation for its silence is that it is occupied with more important issues, and that its leadership is exercising wisdom and restraint. It is therefore refusing to be drawn into side disputes with a party whose Arab and Western allies have almost entirely deserted it.
Meanwhile, bombings inside Syria are increasing in several cities, particularly Homs, Aleppo and Hama, carried out by opposing armed factions. These include Syrian groups protesting the new government’s increasingly sectarian character, as well as hostile extremist “terrorist” organizations, such as Islamic State (ISIS), seeking revenge for their marginalization and attempting to undermine stability and security.
“The new Syria” is being abandoned by those who used it and its leadership as an instrument to achieve their overriding objective: the overthrow of the former Syrian government. Now that this objective has been achieved, they have turned their backs on it, leaving it to face its fate and pull out its own thorns with its bare hands—if it still has hands and fingernails. Time will tell.
First published in Rai al-Youm on 3 October 2026.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Levant Files.
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