Mahdi Nidal Fawaz died on August 15, 2013, in the midst of the Syrian civil war. His grave is adorned with Quranic verses and portraits of the Iranian ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, and the former leader of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, under whom he fought. Mahdi was only 19 years old. Hussein Reda had not even reached adolescence. Born on the first day of 2002, he died in August 2017. A boy depicted in the painting on his grave holding a machine gun almost bigger than himself.
There are even entire families who perished fighting under the same flag. Like Abdul Rasoul Bashir's family, who died in 2012 and is buried in the same place alongside three of his sons.
The graves of paramilitaries who fought under the orders of Hezbollah and other Shia groups allied with Iran are legion in the cemetery of Sayidah Zainab.
"This cemetery is from 2011. When it was full, another one was established in 2014. In this one, there are 4,000 martyrs [referring to the militants who fell in combat]," explains one of the guardians of the site.
The Syrian couple, like the vast majority of the residents of this town located about ten kilometers south of Damascus, are Shia Muslims and do not want to be identified. They claim that the new authorities of the country have been "very respectful" - only a few broken signs can be seen in the cemetery - but admit that they are "afraid."
Now, their main concern is that the famous sanctuary of Sayidah Zainab, where the daughter of the first Shia leader is supposed to be buried, has not paid them since the end of last year, when the institution was still under the auspices of Tehran.
The existence of the two Syrians has undergone as drastic a change as that of Abdel Hakim Abed, 45, who until less than four months ago fought against pro-Iranian factions in the ranks of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS). Today, he is in charge of protecting the mausoleum of Sayidah Zainab and the cemeteries of the paramilitaries allied with Bashar Assad, with whom he had to fight during the revolt against the dictator.
"We have orders to respect and protect all Syrians. Those who have surrendered their weapons will have no problem," he states.
Sayidah Zainab, an enclave where hundreds of thousands of people lived, was throughout the Syrian civil war a symbol of the enormous influence that Iran came to have in Syria. Its fate reflects the tectonic shift promoted by the fall of the Syrian dictator.
The alliance between Damascus and Tehran dates back to the 1980s, when Bashar's father, Hafez Assad, decided to support Iran in its war with Iraq, as the Syrian autocrat maintained a bitter rivalry with the strongman of the latter country, Saddam Hussein.
The pact was formalized in 1982 when one of Assad's main advisors, the Foreign Minister, Abd al-Halim Khaddam, traveled to the Iranian capital to sign a strategic agreement for economic and military collaboration.
The agreement between the two nations became one of the most solid political axes in the Middle East and expanded with the start of the popular uprising in Syria when Iran decided to mobilize Hezbollah and other allied paramilitary groups to support the dictatorship. The intervention of the Shia militias was decisive in preventing the fall of Bashar Assad and consolidating what was called the Shia crescent, connecting Iran with Lebanon precisely through Syrian territory.
The final victory of the Syrian rebels last December was a huge geopolitical setback for Iran and by extension for Hezbollah itself.
According to Nicole Grajewski, an Iran expert at the Carnegie think tank, Tehran invested between 30,000 and 50,000 million dollars to support Bashar Assad in the last 13 years, an immense figure that helps understand the magnitude of the catastrophe suffered by the ayatollahs' regime.
"The collapse of the Assad regime dismantled over a decade of Iranian investment in Syria and the complex network of influence woven by Qassem Soleimani," who was Tehran's chief strategist in the Middle East until his assassination by the US in 2020.
"We cannot be proud of having lost Syria. We have received a very strong blow. It has been very difficult," admitted in December one of the Iranian military leaders, General Behrouz Esbati, who escaped from Damascus the night before the opposition entered the capital.
The strategic blow to Iran has not changed its policy towards the Arab nation, and the country's leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, incited the Syrian population to rebellion last December when he told them they should "firmly oppose" the new authorities.
Syrian media continue to implicate Tehran and Hezbollah in the recent events in the regions where the Alawite minority lives, which witnessed an initial uprising of militias loyal to the ousted Bashar Assad and then the massacre of hundreds of civilians of that confession by Damascus-affiliated forces. "Tehran seeks to deepen the sectarian conflict to ensure the continuity of its influence in the country," the Syrian television website published this week in an analysis of relations with Iran.
A man among the tombstones of the Sayida Zaynab cemetery.A. Lores
The text emphasized that Iranian regime propaganda media give special coverage to Alawite armed groups - led by former Assad army officers known for their involvement in a myriad of war crimes - whom they describe as "popular resistance."
Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian civil war has led to an escalation of tension between Lebanon and forces loyal to the new Damascus administration, which has already resulted in several armed clashes on the border in the Bekaa Valley.
Last Sunday, that region witnessed another outbreak of violence after a mutual exchange of accusations in which Damascus said Hezbollah had "kidnapped" and killed three of its soldiers, and Lebanese media accused the Syrians of having executed a Lebanese couple. The dispute escalated into violent clashes for hours, using artillery, missiles, and even planes, the latter from the Syrian side. The final death toll exceeded a dozen on both sides.
Last February, several areas in the Syrian district of Homs near the border also saw tank and artillery battles involving clans allied with the movement led by Naim Qassem and the Lebanese army itself.
The recurring clashes take place in the vicinity of the Syrian town of Quseir, quite ironically, as the battle for control of that strategic town in 2013 was Hezbollah's first public and massive intervention on the side of the Syrian army.
That conflict, which ended with the victory of the Lebanese movement and the displacement of many Sunni residents from the area, cemented the control of the group led by Hasan Nasrallah, who used that area as one of its main logistical supply routes.