Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Syria’s post-Assad government have a contentious relationship formed in the bloody crucible of the Syrian civil war, when Hezbollah intervened against the Syrian opposition in 2013 in defence of the ailing regime of Bashar Al-Assad.
However, a recent Reuters report suggests that the two sides have held secret meetings in Turkey designed to defuse tensions between them, which may suggest a relative détente.
This follows sporadic clashes on stretches of the non-demarcated Syrian-Lebanese border since the fall of the regime, and accusations by the Syrian government that Hezbollah is operating cells inside the country.
According to the report, both sides agreed they held no hostility towards one another, and that Syria assured Hezbollah that it would not invade Lebanon.
Syrian officials also reportedly asked Hezbollah to help stop cross-border smuggling, and to dismantle its sleeper cells.
The Syrian government’s English-language platform quickly denied the report, stating “these claims are false. No such meeting took place”.
The Turkish Presidency’s communications directorate also denied the report, claiming it was “entirely unfounded”. Hezbollah has not publicly commented on the report.
However, if these meetings did indeed occur, it would reflect a developing relationship between them from battlefield foes to pragmatic, albeit suspicious, partners.
A bitter history
After the 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah and its former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were once looked upon favourably by large parts of the Syrian population.
That changed in 2013 when the armed group intervened in Syria to bolster the Assad regime. “Hezbollah formed the elite troops fighting on behalf of the regime,” explains Issam Al-Reis, a senior researcher at ETANA, a Syrian research organisation, to The New Arab.
“By 2013, as the regime’s military weakened, they became the main force fighting the opposition,” he added.
“They often faced off against HTS [which formed Syria’s new government in 2024], and so they have both lost people fighting each other.”
Early on in its intervention, Hezbollah was implicated in the 2013 siege of Al-Qusayr, in which they restricted access to food, water, and medical supplies into the town, in a strategy that may have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people according to the UN’s Commission of Inquiry.
Similar tactics were subsequently employed by the Shia group during the sieges of Homs and Aleppo.
HTS, in the guise of its previous iteration, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Al-Nusra, had claimed a number of bombings in Lebanon that killed dozens, many of them centred upon the largely Shia Dahiyeh in southern Beirut.
It is within this context that the relationship between Hezbollah and the forces that would become Syria’s new government became “one of extreme hostility,” Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based analyst at the Atlantic Council, tells The New Arab.
As Syria’s civil war developed, Blanford also acknowledges that their relationship developed an important “sectarian element”.
“It became an enmity not just between battlefield opponents but Shiite and Sunni Islamists.”
This enmity didn’t disappear following the fall of the Assad regime in 2024.
A new Syria
HTS launched its offensive the day after the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel began following the 2024 war. Over 11 days, it rolled back years of territory hard-won by the regime and its Lebanese ally.
Whilst Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem pledged to “thwart” the offensive, crippled by its recent confrontation with Israel, the armed group was able to do little to save Assad.
In the closing hours of Assad’s regime, tens of thousands of Syrian Shias, Hezbollah associates, and regime officials flooded into neighbouring Lebanon – many remain housed in Hezbollah funded refugee camps in north Bekaa.
Following the fall, relations between the two floundered. The Syrian government has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of running a network of cells within the country designed to destabilise the country’s fledgling post-war recovery or potentially incite conflict with Israel.
Last week, Syria’s Ministry of Interior announced the arrest of three individuals who they claim were part of a Hezbollah-affiliated cell, as they had been attempting to set up rocket launchers in the southern Syrian province of Deraa.
According to Al-Reis, following the 2018 reconciliation between the regime and the armed groups in southern Syria, Hezbollah recruited approximately 5,000 fighters from the factions.
“It has retained contacts in southern Syria and has been attempting to reconnect and recruit from that network,” he explains to The New Arab.
Hezbollah has repeatedly denied the accusations. In September, however, the intelligence branch of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces carried out a series of raids, arresting five individuals, some with links to Hezbollah, who were allegedly training Syrian nationals in Lebanon for operations inside Syria.
Equally, the new Syrian government’s relations with Lebanon have been overshadowed by reports of US pressure on President Ahmed al-Sharaa to intervene militarily against Hezbollah.
Whilst al-Sharaa has repeatedly denied any intention to invade Lebanon, stating “we are looking for economic channels, not military ones,” in a June interview with Al Mashhad, it has nevertheless inflamed historical memories in Beirut.
Syria occupied large parts of Lebanon between 1976 and 2005.
“Since independence, some in Syria have continued to see Lebanon as an extension of ‘historical’ Syria,” says Blanford. “There are concerns that the new government may have this mentality, but so far they appear to be prioritising state-to-state relations.”
Syria has adopted a ‘no enemies’ approach to its post-Assad foreign policy. One element of it has been a rapprochement with Russia, which, in 2016, intervened in the Syrian civil war on behalf of the regime.
In October 2025, al-Sharaa visited Russia and met Vladimir Putin, a meeting which paved the way for Syria and Russia to agree on a deal in August which will hand over Russia’s bases on the Syrian coast to the Syrian military whilst allowing a small Russian contingent to remain on site.
However, Syria has not pursued a similar rapprochement with Iran. The countries still has no formal diplomatic relationship, and last week, Mohammed Al-Jafal, advisor for Afro-Asian Affairs at Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that any new relationship between the two “must respect Syria’s sovereignty”.
“The intensity of hostility to Hezbollah and Iran is much deeper than towards Russia,” says Blanford. “Russia is seen as a global player that will ultimately need to be accommodated with.”
The difficult relationship has also complicated Damascus’ engagement with the Lebanese state due to the “suspicion that Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah,” Sam Heller, a Beirut-based Researcher with Center for International Policy, tells The New Arab.
“Bilateral engagement has been slow and incremental due to this, although the Syrians are slowly developing a feel for the make-up of Lebanon’s politics and the extent of Hezbollah’s real influence.”
Why now?
Before this recent meeting, there have been some signs of a potential softening of Hezbollah and Syria’s relationship. In July, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani said Damascus was open to meeting with Hezbollah. In August, Qassem said that “there is no impediment to a public meeting”.
The southern regions of both Syria and Lebanon are facing a sustained Israeli occupation, which may have influenced Ankara’s decision to facilitate talks.
“Turkey is playing a leading role regionally in opposing Israeli actions in Lebanon and Syria,” says Al-Reis. “For them, playing this intermediary role may be more about trying to balance Israel than anything.”
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is interested in “establishing a predictable relationship without recurring fears of border clashes and potential military escalation on a new front,” says Heller.
However, for Blanford, it seems that Hezbollah is operating a “dual policy,” of beginning to engage diplomatically with Syria’s rulers whilst still working to destabilise them in parallel.
Syria’s government may be more concerned about the risk of destabilisation posed by Hezbollah. Cells affiliated with the group have on several occasions been caught setting up rocket launchers in southern Syria – just one successful rocket launch against Israeli positions could invite a fierce Israeli response.
Yet analysts say that it remains politically difficult for the Syrian government to acknowledge talks between them due to the intensity of animosity from large parts of the Syrian population.
“Ultimately talks may just be driven by a sense that each side could undermine the other,” says Blanford.
“That despite the history of bloodshed between them, it is better for their own [respective] interests to reach some understanding.”