Syria is roughly three-quarters Sunni Arab. Iran spent thirteen years, tens of thousands of imported Shia militia fighters, and a documented conversion campaign keeping an Alawite minority regime in power over them anyway.
Why Assad mattered enough to save
When Syria’s civil war began in 2011 against a government led by Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority sect, ruling over a country that is roughly three-quarters Sunni Arab, Iran intervened almost immediately, out of hard strategic interest: Syria was Iran’s land corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Importing a sectarian army to do it
Iran organized and deployed tens of thousands of Shia militia fighters into Syria, recruited from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, specifically along sectarian lines to prop up a government fighting a majority-Sunni uprising.
Demographic engineering, documented
Iran pursued what regional analysts have called a deliberate "Shiification" strategy: expanding cultural and religious influence to encourage conversion to Shiism, while facilitating demographic shifts around strategically important areas, including displacement of Sunni residents near Damascus and the Lebanese border.
The bill, and who it was sent to
Sustained Iranian and allied military support kept Assad’s government alive years longer than it could have survived alone, prolonging a war that killed hundreds of thousands, the overwhelming majority Sunni Syrians.
When it finally ended
That investment collapsed within days in December 2024, when Sunni Islamist-led rebel forces took Damascus.
Timeline
- 2011 — Syrian uprising begins, Iran intervenes
- 2012 — Iraqi Shia militias deployed
- 2017 — Iran's conversion strategy documented
- 2024 — Assad falls
Key Locations
Damascus, Sayyidah Zaynab shrine area, Lebanon-Syria border