Middle Eastern Analysts Evaluate the Battle for Deir ez-Zor Outcome

You can run, but you can’t hide when Russian pilots are flying close air support.

“The key to the East is in the hands of Damascus”, “The curtain calls for ISIS” - similar headlines can be found among a great variety of Arab media sources, reporting on the liberation of the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor. For more than 1,400 dayы terrorists would try to assault the surrounded city in a bid to seize massive small weapons and munitions arsenals.

However, the latest successful push of the Syrian government forces towards the city, with Russian aircraft flying close air support for them, according to regional observers, allowed Damascus to score a number of points both strategic, political and moral.

This push resulted in the region inhabited by a million of mostly Sunni people and richest hydrocarbon fields returning under the control of Damascus. This will eliminate the fuel deficit that the country has been suffering from over the past three years.

After security the Deir ez-Zor region the army will keep on grinding ground, making its way to the border with Iraq to recapture the Abu Kamal border crossing. This will allow Damascus to exercise full control over the 250 miles long strip of border that it shares with Iraq, preventing terrorists from getting supplies and reinforcements from across the border.

This latest success is completing a series of successful offensives carried out by the Syrian Arab army that started in Aleppo, then Hama, and proceeded to the outskirts of Damascus. As a result, according to the Al-Manar newspaper, ISIS has lost the absolute majority of its territorial gains, being pushed back to as little as 15% of Syrian lands.

Thus, the Syrian Arab army has completely seized the initiative on the battlefield, which resulted in major changes starting to occur across the Middle Eastern geopolitical space.

The Tunisian Ash-Shourouk newspaper has noted a total meltdown that is to observed among he main political and financial sponsors of armed anti-government, resulting in them abandoning the Assad must go mantra.

The United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Germany have all changed their priorities, focusing this time on the actual fight against a common enemy – international terrorist groups. Turkey was the first to alter its tactics, since its immediate neighbor has managed to survive the radical onslaught inflicted upon it, which means that Damascus is going to affect what is happening across the border for years to come.

At the same time Erdogan’s position on the actions of his sworn enemies – the Kurds, that keep pursuing their eternal dream of a sovereign state, while enjoying full Washington’s support, has pushed Ankara back into an alliance with the Syrian leader. The Turkish military leadership has expressed its readiness to join the Tehran-Damascus-Moscow axis.

Turks, experts believe, are determined to withdraw their forces from Syria, as soon as Damascus’ ability to ensure that no militants, including Kurdish ones, would be able to cross the border is ensured.

According to a number of Arab analysts, under the influence of changing political currents the position of the Gulf countries on the Syrian dossier is shifting as well.

In general, all the Gulf countries are affected by the decline in oil prices and an abrupt drop in oil revenues that constituted their main source of income. This forces them to cut costs, including those on foreign policy proxy military adventures.

The recent discord between Qatar, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, on the other, also distracts their attention from foreign policy goals.

But media attacks on Syria that started with the beginning of the so-called civil war back 2011 are being carried on. They were pushed forward by various regional media sources, that supported by petrodollars of the above mentioned states. They would keep insisting that the “Syrian regime is on the brink of collapse” and that its days “are numbered”.

However, today, after the major success in Deir ez-Zor those sources remain silent. It is really difficult to object to the conclusions of the Syrian journalist A.Maarbuni: “The operation stretching from the Mediterranean sea to the Euphrates river, which the Syrian army started after the arrival of Russian air groups two years ago, is proceeding as planned.”

Yury Zinin, Leading Research Fellow at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”