Allowing the last desperate holdouts of Aleppo to leave, without first seeking terms, was not in the Iranian playbook. Within hours of Turkey and Russia announcing a deal, Iran had sabotaged it, demanding the lifting of a siege of two Shia villages north of Aleppo, Fua and Kefraya, which had been surrounded by the al-Qaeda-inspired Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. It also wanted a trade of prisoners and bodies of militants.
Victory in Aleppo matters enormously for both sides, but when the dust settles in the city, it counts for more in Iran.
Securing Syria's second city and industrial heart is much less to do with re-establishing state sovereignty than about asserting its own influence and agenda in the strategic heart of the region. Aleppo is a crossroads in Iran's project to build a land corridor to the Mediterranean coast. It is also likely to be a new centre of Tehran's geopolitical projection, which has been on open display elsewhere in the conflict.
Iranian officials have negotiated with the opposition militia, Ahrar al-Sham, about the fate of the opposition-held town of Zabadani, west of Damascus. Iran proposed a swap of the town's Sunnis, who would be sent to Idlib province, for the residents of Fua and Kefraya, who would in turn be relocated to Zabadani.
"The Iranians want no Sunnis between Damascus and the Lebanese border," said a senior Lebanese official. "There is a very clear plan to change the sectarian tapestry of the border."
In the Damascus suburb of Darayya, where opposition communities surrendered in August, and accepted being flown to Idlib, 300 Shia families from Iraq have moved in. Further to the west, near the Zainab shrine, Iran has bought substantial numbers of properties, and also sponsored the arrival of Shia families, securing the area as a bridgehead before Zabadani. Securing corridors of influence with Shia communities marks, potentially, Iran's most assertive moment since the revolution of 1979, after which Tehran's proxies have gradually projected its influence, through Hizbollah, through the US invasion of Iraq - which switched political power from Sunnis to Shias - and now through the chaos of Syria.
Russia's goals have been less about ideology, and more about realpolitik.
President Vladimir Putin now has a renewed stake in the region, at the expense of the US, which he believes abdicated a decades-long role under Barack Obama, and which Donald Trump has little interest in reclaiming. Russian influence is likely back in the Middle East to stay.
As the US found out, it will be checked by the fervour of an ascendant regional heavyweight.
- Observer