After meeting in Turkey, can Syria's new government manage tensions with Hezbollah? - analysis

A disputed report of secret talks between Syrian officials and Hezbollah representatives in Turkey has raised a broad question: Could border security, weapons smuggling, and armed networks lead Syria’s new government and Hezbollah to establish a limited channel for managing tensions?

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Such contact would not necessarily signal reconciliation or restore the previous alliance Hezbollah maintained with Bashar Assad’s government.

Reuters reported on Oct. 1 that Syrian government officials and Hezbollah representatives held direct talks in Turkey in September aimed at reducing friction between the two sides. The report cited six sources, including two Syrian officials, a US official, and a senior Lebanese security source close to Hezbollah. 

According to Reuters, Turkish security and intelligence officials helped facilitate the contact, which addressed issues including weapons smuggling and Hezbollah-linked cells inside Syria.

Damascus and Ankara, however, categorically denied the account.

Syrian authorities deny meeting with Hezbollah

Syrian authorities said the claims were false and that “no such meeting took place.” The denial was accompanied by a more detailed statement from Syrian presidential media adviser Ahmad Muwaffaq Zaidan, who rejected reports of contacts with Hezbollah and said Damascus’ approach toward Lebanon is based on dealing with the Lebanese state and its official institutions.

Zaidan said negotiations with Lebanon should be conducted “with the state, not a militia,” while stressing Damascus’ support for Lebanese sovereignty, border control, and the concentration of political and military decision-making in the hands of state institutions.

Turkey also denied hosting any such meeting. The Turkish presidency’s Center for Combating Disinformation said claims that Syrian officials and Hezbollah representatives met in Turkey under the auspices of Turkish intelligence were “completely baseless.” It said the reported date, location, content, and participants did not reflect reality and described the allegations as fabricated.

The result is a direct contradiction between the Reuters account and the official Syrian and Turkish denials, meaning the alleged meeting cannot be treated as an established fact.

But the issues said to have driven the contact do not disappear with the denials: a long and difficult border, weapons smuggling, wanted individuals, Syrian allegations of Hezbollah-linked networks operating inside the country, and tensions between Hezbollah and the government that replaced its longtime ally, Assad.

According to Reuters, the Syrian side sought Hezbollah’s help in stopping weapons smuggling and addressing sleeper cells, while Syrian officials reportedly told the group that Damascus did not plan to send forces into Lebanon to disarm it. The report also said indirect contacts preceded the alleged meeting, without producing a final agreement.

Syrian politician Fawaz Tello, however, doubts that Damascus has any real interest in establishing such a channel.

Tello told The Media Line that, in his view, Hezbollah does not have sufficient independence when it comes to strategic decisions involving Syria or its wider regional role.

“Hezbollah is not the decision maker,” Tello said. “In the end, it implements Iranian policy, and therefore there is no interest in opening any dialogue with it.”

Any serious dialogue, he said, would require Hezbollah to stop protecting wanted individuals who may be sheltering in Lebanon, reveal networks affiliated with it inside Syria, and cooperate with the Lebanese government in allowing state institutions to exercise full security authority across the country.

Those conditions, Tello said, make the prospect of dialogue more of a “hypothetical question” than a realistic political track, because he does not believe Hezbollah can provide what Damascus would require.

He also rejected the idea that Turkey has played a mediating role, saying he does not believe Ankara has opened such a channel and arguing that Syria’s relationship with Lebanon should be conducted through state institutions rather than an armed party.

From Lebanon, however, the calculation looks different.

Lebanese journalist Mariam Majdoline Lahham told The Media Line that Hezbollah may now have a greater interest than Damascus in opening a limited channel of communication.

She said the fall of Assad deprived the group of a strategic environment that had been deeply important politically, militarily, and logistically. Syria, once an ally, a supply corridor, and a strategic rear base for Hezbollah, is now governed by a new authority that views the group through the role it played alongside Assad’s forces during the war.

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“If the information about a communication channel is accurate, I do not read it as reconciliation or the beginning of a return to the old relationship,” Lahham said. “At a minimum, Hezbollah wants to manage the level of hostility with Damascus.”

She said Hezbollah now wants clarity on Syria’s intentions toward the group, how Damascus will handle the border, and whether it will view Hezbollah solely as a Lebanese domestic issue or also as a security adversary.

“The party that once entered Syria from a position of strength is now interested in obtaining assurances from Syria that the confrontation will not move against it inside Lebanon,” Lahham said.

Lahham said Hezbollah could, in theory, make certain security commitments if the networks Damascus is concerned about are directly controlled by the group.

“If these networks actually belong to Hezbollah or operate under its direction, then it can stop them,” she said. “If it says it does not have the ability to do so, then that raises another question: Who is running these networks?”

She distinguished those networks from weapons smuggling across the border more broadly, noting that numerous groups and networks operate along the Lebanese-Syrian frontier and cannot all be attributed to Hezbollah.

At the same time, she said Hezbollah’s significant influence in some border regions makes it difficult to treat the group as a passive observer with no connection to what happens there.

On the question of Syrians wanted by Damascus who may be in Lebanon, Lahham said the issue should be handled through the Lebanese state and judiciary, not through Hezbollah.

If the group is protecting particular individuals, she said, it can withdraw that protection, “but it has no right to manage the issue of wanted individuals between two states.”

Her position intersects with the Syrian government’s public message: Any lasting arrangement concerning the border, wanted individuals, or security should remain a matter between Damascus and Beirut.

“The border is not Hezbollah’s border with Syria,” Lahham said. “It is the border of the Lebanese Republic with the Syrian Arab Republic.”

She said limited communication aimed at preventing a confrontation or containing an immediate security incident could be understandable under exceptional circumstances. Turning such contacts into a permanent mechanism, however, would once again give Hezbollah a sovereign security role parallel to Lebanese state institutions.

Iran is another factor that cannot be separated from any possible track.

Tello believes the form of Iranian influence that existed in Syria ended with Assad’s fall and that the new government will not allow the previous structure, which gave Tehran and its allies extensive military and political influence, to return.

Lahham sees the relationship in more nuanced terms.

She said it is an exaggeration to assume Hezbollah needs Iranian approval for every minor decision, but it is equally misleading to portray the group as independent from Tehran on strategic matters.

“It may negotiate on its own, yes. It may send a security official and reach limited arrangements on the ground, yes,” she said. “But the more we move from the tactical to the strategic level, the more Iran becomes present, even if it is not sitting at the table.”

As for a possible Turkish role, Lahham said it would not be surprising if the reported channel were eventually confirmed, given Ankara’s influence in Syria under its new government. But she cautioned against interpreting that as Turkey replacing Iran in Hezbollah’s regional relationships.

Turkey could provide a communications channel between two parties that do not trust each other, she said, but the question that should be asked in Lebanon is: “Where is the Lebanese state?”

“When we have an issue involving the Lebanese-Syrian border, weapons, smuggling, wanted individuals, and security, and then discover that the discussion is taking place between the Syrian government and an armed Lebanese party, that in itself is a problem,” she said.

For Lahham, the most important meaning of any meeting, if one is eventually confirmed, would not be the restoration of Hezbollah’s influence but the scale of the change in its position.

“Years ago, Hezbollah entered Syria militarily to support the regime and participated in shaping realities on the ground,” she said. “Today, if the report is accurate, it goes to a security meeting in search of rules that prevent a confrontation with the new Syrian authorities.”

“I do not see us rebuilding an old axis,” she added. “We are looking at a party trying to adapt to a balance of power that changed fundamentally after Assad’s fall.”