In the Iranian cultural center adjacent to the al-Noqta mosque in Aleppo, portraits of Hassan Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyah were found on March 1, 2025. (Credit: Lucile Wassermann/Collage by Jaime Lee Haddad)
“We were there just for show,” said Mohammad*, who served from late 2017 in Qusayr, in the Homs district, as a border guard. “Everything was under Hezbollah’s control, with the complicity of the Fourth Division, led by [younger brother of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] Maher al-Assad. Drug trafficking, weapons, and all kinds of smuggling.”Mohammad was a member of an army trained to report dissent and terrorize the population. But his actual role was quite the opposite: to be present, but pretend to see nothing, hear nothing, and above all, say nothing about the activities of those who truly inspired fear — Hezbollah’s forces.The fall of Bashar al-Assad and the rise to power of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) marked the end of Iranian dominance in Syria. Its proxies — chief among them Hezbollah, which had been backing Damascus since...
“We were there just for show,” said Mohammad*, who served from late 2017 in Qusayr, in the Homs district, as a border guard. “Everything was under Hezbollah’s control, with the complicity of the Fourth Division, led by [younger brother of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] Maher al-Assad. Drug trafficking, weapons, and all kinds of smuggling.”Mohammad was a member of an army trained to report dissent and terrorize the population. But his actual role was quite the opposite: to be present, but pretend to see nothing, hear nothing, and above all, say nothing about the activities of those who truly inspired fear — Hezbollah’s forces.The fall of Bashar al-Assad and the rise to power of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) marked the end of Iranian dominance in Syria. Its proxies — chief among them Hezbollah, which had been...