Key takeaways:

• Iranian mainstream news outlets called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) a terrorist group, until HTS drove Assad out of Syria. Then they started to refer to HTS as the “Syrian opposition coalition.”
• They likely changed their tone because Syria remains an essential supply link to their proxy Hezbollah.
• The Iranian media largely blamed the USA, Russia, and others for the fall of Assad. This development was, it suggested, yet another reason not to trust other nations.

Iran’s “axis of resistance” suffered a major loss last week, when the Syrian rebels Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew the Tehran-friendly government of Bashar al-Assad.

The Iranian government backed Assad for years. In return, Assad provided a land corridor for Iran to supply weapons and materiel to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Using Talisman, our data platform, FilterLabs has been monitoring Iranian mainstream and social media. How are they talking about HTS? And what might it mean for the politics of the region going forward?

Average sentiment in discourse around HTS was gradually rising in Iranian mainstream media for the first few weeks of December, right up until the rebel group’s surprise victory:

However, a closer look at individual artifacts that Talisman unearthed revealed that while sentiment around HTS was rising in the days leading up to Assad’s defeat, this was largely because the media was giving extensive coverage to a speech by Iran’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He insisted that “Iran fully recognizes and supports Syria's sovereignty to fight and eliminate terrorist groups such as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which bring destruction, chaos and widespread suffering.” Other stories relayed similar statements from government officials declaring Iran’s unwavering support of the Assad regime, or reported friendly overtures between HTS and Israel. Mentions of HTS themselves were almost always negative—or neutral at best.

After Damascus fell, however, Iranian coverage changed. Iranian government officials stopped calling HTS terrorists and started to refer to them as an “armed opposition.” (As we reported earlier this week, Russian media did something similar.)

It seems that, negative history with HTS aside, Iran is committed to friendly relations with whoever is in charge of Syria. This is because they need the country for future anti-Israel and U.S. operations. Syria has been crucial in Iran’s influence in the Middle East and resistance to Israel, because Syria is a conduit to get supplies to its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Without a link across Syria, Iran’s “axis of resistance” becomes more of an archipelago.

But if the Iranian government was trying to switch its rhetoric toward HTS from negative to neutral, then why was average sentiment falling?  

When we used Talisman to look at the news stories underlying the sentiment drop after December 9th, we found something interesting. The stories with the most negative sentiment were not centered on HTS. They mentioned HTS, but the focus of coverage had shifted to concerns about possible Western influence going forward: The “Zionist regime” in Israel might take advantage of the region’s instability. The United States might start to dominate the region. One analyst argued that the lesson from all of this is that it had been a big mistake for Assad to place his trust in the West:  “Bashar al-Assad tried to ease economic sanctions by appeasing the West, but this strategy led to major miscalculations. The West, together with Turkey, designed a plan to capture Damascus by equipping and supporting terrorist groups. This operation led to the fall of the Assad regime.” 

Another, though much smaller, contributor to the downward sentiment trend: while Iranian news outlets did not go so far as to speak well of HTS, after the downfall of Assad a few of them did display a willingness to criticize him and his regime as too corrupt and brutal, as well as ineffective. Some stories also cited disagreement among Iranian leaders about how to respond.

Ultimately, though, the unified message in news coverage was that the ultimate source of instability was foreign (i.e. Western) interference in Syrian affairs. 

FilterLabs found similar ideas on Iranian social media as well. There was concern about the “lightning-fast advances of terrorists” as HTS gained ground, and criticisms of the group. Fear of the “Zionist machine” was a recurring thread, both before and after the fall of Assad. One difference we did observe: social media users seemed more willing than news outlets to specifically discuss the horrors of the regime and the suffering of the Syrian people. Telegram and Tiktok users posted videos and reports about torture by Assad’s forces and the horrors of Saydnaya prison.

Eight Days On: Iran’s Response Thus Far

Much like Russia, Iran has accepted Assad’s fall and is willing to make peace with HTS. Their own immediate strategic interests trump their previous alliances. They are even willing, in some cases, to point blame at Assad. But they are finding other primary targets for foreboding and critique.

Iran might be blaming the West for a few reasons. First, as Assad’s staunchest allies throughout his regime, they need to blame someone else for his downfall or accept blame themselves. Second, they might be sending a message to their own citizens: do you see what happens when you put your faith in foreign governments?

Explore the Data in Talisman

Check out the live data on our data analysis platform, Talisman! You can explore the charts in the interactive dashboard for this newsletter, and subscribers with full platform access can even investigate the individual artifacts underlying the data. This is an ongoing story, so we'll be updating the dashboard with new data as the situation unfolds.

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Russia Update: Sentiment continues to decline

If you missed our December 10th piece on reactions from Russia, or want to see the latest data and track how Russian sentiment around Syria has been trending since then, you can check it out on our live Talisman dashboard The Fall of Assad: Reactions from Russia. You can also view the original post on our website.

More Syria analysis coming soon

The FilterLabs team is closely monitoring reactions to the fall of the Assad regime in different countries and will be sharing highlights from our findings. Up next: reactions in Arabic-language media from around the Middle East.