{"id":249726,"date":"2026-08-15T05:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T05:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/249726\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T05:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T05:17:09","slug":"russias-role-in-middle-east-politics-endures-shifts-to-being-secondary-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/249726\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s role in Middle East politics endures, shifts to being \u2018secondary power\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia<\/a> is confounding expectations that its influence in the Middle East<\/a> would drastically decline after the downfall of Syria<\/a>\u2019s Assad regime in 2024.<\/p>\n

At the time, Moscow operated about 100 military facilities in the war-torn country, following its intervention in the Syrian civil conflict from 2015 to prop up then president Bashar al-Assad in alliance with Iran and its regional proxies.<\/p>\n

When Assad was forced to flee to Moscow, and control of most of Syria was seized by Islamist rebels led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa<\/a>, Russia looked set to lose the air and naval bases that enabled it to project power in the Middle East and North Africa.Instead, President Vladimir Putin<\/a>\u2019s government has managed to hold on to its two most precious assets in Syria: Hmeimim airbase and a portion of the port in Tartus, Russia\u2019s only warm-water naval base in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

According to a deal announced by the Syrian foreign ministry on Sunday, Russia\u2019s only two official military bases outside the former Soviet Union would be turned into \u201cjoint training and capacity-building centres, within new arrangements that preserve mutual interests\u201d.<\/p>\n

No further details were given, but Russian military contingents would reportedly remain at both facilities under the new arrangement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia is confounding expectations that its influence in the Middle East would drastically decline after the downfall of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[5291,1613,16541,262,655,49146,34,37,68770,49,2155,650,95],"class_list":["post-249726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-abraham-accords","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-bushehr","tag-china","tag-egypt","tag-hmeimim","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-mecca-joint-defence-agreement","tag-middle-east","tag-moscow","tag-pakistan","tag-syria"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117097833605167539","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}