The new Syrian government is under direct assault from Hezbollah remnants determined to wreck the post-Assad transition. Since toppling Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Damascus has thwarted five major terrorist operations and dismantled ten Hezbollah-linked cells. These plots expose Hezbollah’s frantic bid to preserve Iran’s shattered regional dominance and punish Syria for breaking free.
Hezbollah inflicted lasting damage on Syria through its ironclad partnership with the previous regime. In tandem with the Fourth Armored Division, Hezbollah turned swaths of the country into a narco-state built on captagon production. Factories hugged the Lebanon border and sprawled across Damascus suburbs under regime protection.
Hezbollah supplied the logistics, armed security, and smuggling expertise that routed tons of pills through Jordan, Turkey, and Gulf ports. In 2021 alone, authorities seized exports worth $5.7 billion; the full annual market reached an estimated $57 billion — ten times Syria’s legitimate state budget. The flood created hundreds of thousands of addicts, laundered billions for weapons and militias, and bankrolled Iranian influence. Syria paid with economic ruin, social collapse, and total international isolation.
After Assad fell, the transitional authorities slashed the trade by 90 percent. They shuttered every known facility, burned one million pills in Kafr Sousa, and executed more than 20 major seizures by early 2025, including three million pills in Aleppo and 12 million near Damascus. Hezbollah’s surviving networks still milk these channels for cash and chaos.
Since December 2024, Syrian security forces have arrested dozens of operatives and seized rockets, improvised explosive devices, grenade launchers, and drones.
The five documented terrorist attempts include one operative detained in Homs in July 2025 carrying explosives for urban strikes; an entire cell neutralized in the Damascus countryside in September 2025 after training in Lebanon; the group behind multiple rocket attacks on the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus taken down on February 1, 2026, with weapons traced straight to Hezbollah lines; a five-member cell arrested in Damascus’s Bab Touma district on April 11, 2026 while planting explosives aimed at a senior religious leader; and five operatives intercepted in Quneitra on April 19, 2026 as they readied truck-mounted rocket launchers for cross-border operations.
On top of this, on May 5, 2026, coordinated raids swept Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Tartus, and Latakia. Forces captured an 11-person assassination cell in its final stages. The suspects, including former regime soldiers trained in Lebanon, planned to kill senior officials with improvised explosive devices, firearms, and surveillance equipment.
These operations carry profound geostrategic weight. Hezbollah and Iran are fighting to keep alive the land bridge that once stretched from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. That corridor supplied weapons, rotated fighters, and projected power across the Levant. Assad’s overthrow cut the artery.
Syria has already sealed multiple smuggling tunnels, including a major complex west of Homs uncovered on March 28, 2026. The government has rebuffed Iranian demands, hosted Gulf leaders dangling reconstruction pledges worth over 400 billion dollars, and won partial sanctions relief from Washington and Brussels tied to counter-narcotics and stability. Israel has intensified strikes on lingering weapons caches inside Syrian territory while securing a more stable border.
However, Syria remains dangerously exposed and extremely weak. Porous borders with Lebanon, enormous civil-war arsenals scattered nationwide, battle-hardened ex-regime fighters, and tight clan networks give Hezbollah remnants cheap operating space and plausible deniability. Even after its bruising 2024 war with Israel, the group exploits these weaknesses for harassment and revenge.
Damascus’s relentless counteroffensive signals a historic rupture. By hammering Hezbollah cells in parallel with remaining Islamic State in Iraq and Syria threats, the new authorities are proving they can be a responsible partner. Success will unlock the investment Syria needs to rebuild. Failure risks renewed proxy war.
For Iran, the permanent loss of Syria is a strategic catastrophe that isolates Hezbollah and collapses its Mediterranean ambitions. Gulf capitals see a potential drug-free ally. Israel gains breathing room.
Hezbollah’s campaign is failing, yet the persistence of these plots shows exactly how fragile the new Syria still is — and why every neutralized cell matters in the new balance of power in the Middle East.
Jose Lev is an American-Israeli scholar focused on Israel Studies and Middle Eastern security policy.
A multilingual veteran of both the Israel Defense Forces’ special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds a B.S. in Neuroscience with a Minor in Israel Studies from American University in Washington, D.C., three master’s degrees, and a medical degree as well. Currently, he is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C. area.
Alongside blogging for The Times of Israel, he is a writing fellow at the U.S.-based think tank Middle East Forum; regularly appears on Latin American television networks to provide geopolitical and security analysis; and is a member of the Association for Israel Studies.