Lebanon and Iraq Brace for Syria’s Next Implosion

The countries must act now to insulate themselves from the consequences of their neighbor's decline

The latest videos and images emerging from Syria convey a clear message: both the horizontal social contract, as articulated by Rousseau, where individuals and groups agree on a shared concept of the public interest, and the vertical contract described by Locke and Hobbes between the state and its citizens, have completely disintegrated.

What we have seen is not a chaotic collection of disjointed groups operating outside the state's control. Instead, these groups are organically aligned with the state’s new fascist identity that employs genocide as a deliberate, systematic tool of governance. The regime does not commit atrocities in moments of weakness; it is at its most capable, its most coherent, when executing acts of annihilation.

At the center of this system is an identity the regime has carefully engineered. Salafi-jihadist ideology is a militant interpretation of Islam that seeks to establish a puritanical, theocratic state governed by Sharia law through violent jihad, rejecting all secular, democratic, and non-Salafi Muslim systems as illegitimate. The transitional government has leaned into this narrative, not because it reflects reality, but because it simplifies and distorts it in useful ways.

But not all Arab Sunnis are jihadists, takfiris, or fundamentalists. The regime is trying to reshape them in the same way Saddam Hussein molded Iraq’s Sunnis—through a long, complex process of ideological manipulation that reduces an entire community to a caricature. That caricature is then used as a tool to kill, exile, or recruit at will. This kind of manipulation typically places a certain group in the center, tasking it with the mission of controlling or eliminating the peripheries.

The result is a kind of political cannibalism. Arab Sunnis are being converted into instruments of their own oppression, pushed into a system that tells them: your only role is to serve, to dominate, or to die. And when the mission is completed and the oppressive tools of the regime turn inwards, there will be no one left to stand by the Arab Sunnis of Syria in their attempts to get rid of a regime they helped bring to fruition.

As for Syria’s minorities—Christians, Alawites, Druze, and others—the offer is cruel. You can survive, but only as subjects, not citizens. You can stay, but you must constantly prove your loyalty to a regime that will never truly trust you or treat you fairly. Living in Syria under Ahmed Al-Sharraa is like moving into Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment and being told to consider it a patriotic act. He might feed you dinner—or, more likely, you might be dinner. Either way, you stay at his mercy, smiling through the fear.

This isn’t a system that occasionally turns violent. Violence is the system. It’s the organizing logic of a regime that demands submission from everyone while offering safety to no one.

And there’s no cavalry coming.

Minority groups, even unified, can’t remake Syria. Nor can they save the broader Sunni population from its descent into radicalization. That trajectory is already well underway. The next generation of Islamist strongmen is forming, and men like Ahmed al-Sharaa—now polishing his image and playing statesman—could easily become the next Saddam. Meanwhile, the remaining Sunni Arabs who refuse to fall in line are already being sidelined and hunted by the regime’s political machinery for the perceived crime of being “pro minorities”. It's not the first time this has happened in the region, and Syria has long been a master of turning potential allies into scattered, powerless dissenters.

Outside powers aren’t going to step in—some of them are partially or fully responsible for it. The geopolitical scaffolding that props up today’s Syria is flimsy. Trump’s backchannel deals and Saudi cash won’t hold forever. Eventually, the checks will bounce, the favors will run dry, and Trump will turn on Al-Sharraa the same way he turns on everyone, declaring the warlord he once toyed with to be the world’s most dangerous terrorist.

Turkey, meanwhile, is playing reruns. Its intelligence agencies are running the same playbook they used during their tangled dance with ISIS. We’ve seen how that ends.

Even the Biden administration, for all its talk of democracy and human rights, never offered anything close to a coherent Syria policy. And when the next U.S. president walks into the Oval Office, glances at a map, and asks, “Wait—who are we legitimizing here?” the whole flimsy arrangement could collapse overnight.

When that dam breaks, it won’t just be Syria that drowns.

The spillover will initially affect areas where it has always had the most impact: Lebanon and Iraq. We’ve seen this movie before. The Syrian war didn’t stay inside Syria in 2011—it spilled into Tripoli, Arsal, Erbil, and Fallujah. It helped give rise to ISIS, triggered refugee waves, and destabilized already fragile states. That was the first collapse.

The next one will be worse.

Lebanon is barely a state anymore. Its economy is in free fall, its politics paralyzed, and its sectarian tensions are brewing beneath the surface. Iraq isn’t far behind. Its militias, rival factions, and unresolved civil fractures make it vulnerable to the kind of shock Syria’s final implosion could deliver.

But this doesn’t have to be a helpless wait for impact. There are steps Iraq and Lebanon can take.

First, both countries need to strengthen their border management, both militarily and politically. That means investing in intelligence coordination—not only among themselves, but also with Jordan, Turkey, other states with a stake in managing Syria’s unraveling, and key stakeholders inside Syria, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Regional intelligence-sharing must shift from reactive to anticipatory. The question shouldn't be “Where did the militants go?” but “Where might they go next?”

Second, rebuild internal cohesion now before another wave of violence redraws lines of loyalty. In Iraq, this means supporting democratic reform and accountable governance across the country, including in Sunni-majority areas that have long been caught between state neglect and the authoritarian grip of Shia militias. These areas have been militarized, exploited, and subjected to parallel power structures. Breaking that cycle requires genuine investment in local governance—not through sectarian lenses, but through inclusive, national reform. In Lebanon, the answer starts with insulating security institutions from political gridlock. The army and the Internal Security Forces (ISF) must be prepared to act independently of sectarian paralysis.

Third, both states need to plan for refugee flows and demographic shifts, not just as a humanitarian issue, but as a national security concern. Syrian displacement will strain infrastructure and reshape electoral maps, labor markets, and factional allegiances. Governments must begin contingency planning now, including secure temporary zones, vetting protocols, and international partnerships for funding and resettlement.

And finally, they need to speak clearly to their populations. The politics of denial—pretending Syria’s war is someone else’s problem—has never worked. Political leaders in Beirut and Baghdad should be preparing the public for a hard truth: Syria’s impending collapse won’t come with warning sirens, and no one’s coming to stop it.

Syria’s collapse has triggered a refugee crisis, fueled rising extremism, erased borders—as seen in 2014 when ISIS seized control of a third of Iraq—and led to the disintegration of a once-diverse society. The consequences are already spilling over into neighboring countries. States in the region don’t need another disaster to recognize the risks—they need to act now.

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