The presidents of Iran and Russia on Friday backed a military offensive to retake the last rebel-held area of Syria as Turkey’s president pushed for a cease-fire, perhaps the final chance to avoid what activists warn will be a humanitarian disaster.
The trilateral summit in Tehran between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been viewed as a chance for a diplomatic solution before unleashing a full-scale assault on Syria’s northwestern Idlib province.
Instead, it further highlighted the stark differences between allies of convenience in Syria’s 7-year-old war, the topic of a summit that did not see embattled President Bashar Assad directly represented.
Putin pushed for a muscular military response to crush rebel fighters in Idlib, calling at one point for the “total annihilation of terrorists in Syria.” Rouhani focused on reconstruction and the need for Syria’s displaced to return home, while also calling for the U.S. to immediately withdraw.
“The fires of war and bloodshed in Syria are reaching their end,” Rouhani said, while adding that terrorism must “be uprooted in Syria, particularly in Idlib.”
Erdogan, meanwhile, may have been the leader with the most to lose ahead of the offensive. Turkey, which backed opposition forces against Assad, fears a flood of refugees fleeing a military offensive and the destabilization of areas it now holds in Syria.
“Idlib isn’t just important for Syria’s future, it is of importance for our national security and for the future of the region,” Erdogan said. “Any attack on Idlib would result in a catastrophe. Any fight against terrorists requires methods based on time and patience.”
“We don’t want Idlib to turn into a bloodbath,” he added.
Northwestern Idlib province and surrounding areas are home to about 3 million people – nearly half of them civilians displaced from other parts of Syria. That also includes an estimated 10,000 hard-core fighters, including al-Qaida-linked militants.
For Russia and Iran, both allies of the Syrian government, retaking Idlib is crucial to complete what they see as a military victory in Syria’s civil war after Syrian troops recaptured nearly all other major towns and cities, largely defeating the rebellion against Assad.
A bloody offensive that creates a massive wave of death and displacement, however, runs counter to their narrative that the situation in Syria is normalizing, and could hurt Russia’s longer-term efforts to encourage the return of refugees and get Western countries to invest in Syria’s postwar reconstruction. Russia also wants to maintain its regional presence to fill the vacuum left by America’s long uncertainty about what it wants in the conflict.