Secret meeting in Turkey: Syria and Hezbollah hold talks to ease tensions

Representatives of Syria’s new government and the Lebanese group Hezbollah have held a secret meeting in Turkey, in an effort to ease tensions between the two sides. The news is reported by Reuters, referring to six sources with knowledge of the talks.

This is the first known face-to-face contact between Damascus and Hezbollah since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime at the end of 2024. The meeting took place last month and was attended by Hezbollah representatives, Syrian intelligence officials and Foreign Ministry representatives. According to the sources, the meeting was organized with the mediation of the Turkish security and intelligence services, as part of efforts to avoid a further escalation of tensions. Hezbollah was one of the main allies of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and during the civil war sent fighters to Syria to support the government forces.

After the fall of Assad and the coming to power of the new forces, relations between Damascus and Hezbollah deteriorated significantly. The Syrian authorities have accused the Lebanese group of transporting weapons through Syrian territory. The talks held in Turkey focused mainly on security issues and on how tensions could be reduced. According to some of the Reuters sources, the meeting was positive and the sides showed a willingness to avoid direct clashes.

A Syrian official said that the two sides agreed that they had no hostility toward each other. According to him, Syria assured Hezbollah that it had no intention of intervening militarily in Lebanon to disarm the organization. At the same time, Damascus asked Hezbollah to help stop the smuggling of weapons across the border and to eliminate the group’s remaining structures on Syrian territory, especially in the south of the country. These developments come after the Syrian authorities announced the arrest of a person suspected of being a Hezbollah member who, according to them, was preparing to carry out a rocket attack in the south of Syria. Hezbollah has denied the accusations, declaring that it has no military or security presence on Syrian territory. According to the sources cited by Reuters, the talks have brought progress on some security issues, but no final agreement has been reached yet.

Hezbollah, according to a Lebanese security source, seeks to secure what it considers its “rear guard,” due to concerns that Syria could undertake military action against it in Lebanon. On the other hand, Damascus’s demands for an end to the arms traffic and the dissolution of Hezbollah’s structures in Syria did not receive a clear answer. Both sides, however, are said to have pledged not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. Contacts through Turkey had begun about two months before the September meeting, according to one of the sources. Ankara is trying to play an important role in the stabilization and reconstruction of Syria, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought for Turkey to have a mediating role in security issues in the region.

Three sources said that it was Turkey itself that pushed for the meeting to be held, aiming to be involved directly in the efforts to ease tensions between Damascus and Hezbollah. The Syrian government had earlier expressed readiness for dialogue with Hezbollah. In July, the Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shibani declared that Damascus was open to a meeting, while a month later the Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, said that the group had no objection to holding talks with the Syrian leadership.

An important element of the meeting was the absence of Iran, Hezbollah’s main supporter. According to the Lebanese security source, Hezbollah took part in the talks with Tehran’s knowledge, but the Iranian authorities seem not to have been satisfied that they were not included directly in the process. Meanwhile, the Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is reported to have shown no readiness to re-establish direct relations with Iran at this stage. According to the sources, this situation is one of the reasons why the talks did not produce a final agreement and why the meeting was held away from public attention.