US-Iran war gives Syria’s global economic pitch more urgency

https://arab.news/nyqfu

When the US and Israel launched military operations against Iran a month ago, the Middle East was plunged into debilitating conflict, with retaliatory Iranian missiles and drones striking at least 12 countries across the region. In addition to thousands killed through US-Israeli action in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq, at least 37 people have reportedly been killed in Iranian attacks on the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkiye and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iran’s strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure and its de-facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, furthermore, have triggered global economic shockwaves that leading experts warn could “send the world economy plummeting into a deep recession.”

It is in this context of escalating regional conflict that Syria has remarkably just completed its most stable month in 15 years. After nearly 14 years of civil war, Syria’s transition has been far from peaceful, and two brief but horrifically deadly chapters of violence on the coast and the southern governorate of Suweida served as a reminder of the fragility of the country’s transition. Even so, the general trajectory has been one of stabilization.

According to data collected by Syria Weekly, deadly violence in Syria declined by 30 percent between January and August 2025, and then plummeted by 73 percent in the final third of the year.

Notwithstanding a brief period of fighting in Syria’s northeast in January 2026, the months of February and March 2026 have set consecutive record lows in violence, with March seeing a total of 23 people killed in direct acts of violence. That is 60 percent lower than the February 2026 record low of 58 deaths and 94 percent lower than the post-Assad average of 356 deaths per month.

Fortunately, the horrific violence that struck the coastal regions and Suweida in the first half of 2025 has not been repeated. Furthermore, having been the most significant and consistent factor behind deadly violence in Syria in 2025 — causing an average of 75 deaths per month — vigilante violence and targeted assassinations have declined by 87 percent so far in 2026, with an average of 10 deaths per month between January and March.

In fact, Syria’s coastal region transformed from the most unstable region in the first half of 2025 to the most consistently stable in the second half of the year. That positive trend has continued into 2026, with violence in........

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