Screenshot of video published by Ziad Zahreddine to announce his defection as Syrian consul in Dubai. (Photo taken from the X account @Levant_24_)
Did he resign or was he dismissed from his post? What kind of pressure was exerted? The episode still raises many questions. For several days now, a video has been circulating on social media showing the Syrian consul in Dubai, Ziad Zahreddine, announcing his defection from the current power in Damascus.
The reason: "the barbaric attacks, the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTC), represented by the interim government, in full coordination with the Islamic State (IS) group." This is a reference to the clashes in July that took place between local Bedouin tribes and Druze factions, which the national security forces quickly joined, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
Some observers have claimed, however, that the Druze diplomat appointed under the Assad regime had actually been dismissed by Syrian authorities just prior to these incidents. For its part, Syria's Foreign Ministry declared he had been recalled to Damascus on Sept. 20, which officially suspended his consular duties.
Syrian journalist Qutaiba Yassine wrote on X that « the thief Ziad Zahreddine » had provided diplomatic passports for his family to leave for Germany and seek asylum there, after having accumulated a « loot » following Bashar al-Assad's fall last December. He claims to have reported these allegations to Syria's Foreign Ministry, which then summoned Zahreddine to Damascus.
According to Yassine, the former consul left the United Arab Emirates on Oct. 19, after staging a « fake defection to escape justice. » No information about his whereabouts has been confirmed so far. Some observers have hinted that he may have been pressured by anti-Assad Syrians, as he is said to be the nephew of General Issam Zahreddine, accused of leading the attack that killed American journalist Marie Colvin in Syria in 2012, and who himself died in 2017 fighting the IS group.
Some have considered the possibility of pressure from the Syrian Druze community linked to Israel, bearing in mind that the United Arab Emirates spearheaded normalization with the Jewish state following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020. Ziad Zahreddine would thus be the second diplomat appointed under the previous regime to sever ties with the new Damascus authorities, after Bashar Jaafari, then ambassador to Russia, as analyst Qalaat al-Mudiq notes on X.
The Druze diplomat said in his video that he pledges allegiance to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, leader of the community who is strongly opposed to the Syrian authorities and recognizes Israel as his protector, especially in the southern Syrian region bordering Israel, which has a Druze majority. Promoting separatism in the region, the spiritual leader had created with other factions the "National Guard" in late August, to defend the province of Sweida after abuses committed against members of the community the previous month.
In his video, Ziad Zahreddine called for support of an autonomous entity in southern Syria. This position is the opposite of that of interim president Ahmad el-Chareh, who seeks to unify Syria and incorporate armed groups into the national forces. Damascus diplomacy thus stressed that "his recent statements and positions neither represent the Syrian state nor its official policies, and reflect a purely personal stance that contradicts diplomatic norms and consular ethics." The Foreign Ministry added that the Dubai consulate continues to operate normally and regularly.
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