Iran Update, March 7, 2025
Kelly Campa, Andie Parry, Alexandra Braverman, Ria Reddy, Katherine Wells, Carolyn Moorman, Siddhant Kishore, Ben Rezaei and Brian Carter
Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET
The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) publish the Iran Update, which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. CTP-ISW publishes the Iran Update every weekday.
Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations, and here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of the ongoing opposition offensive in Syria. These maps are updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
Insurgent cells continued to attack Syrian interim government personnel across Latakia and Tartous provinces as Syrian forces deployed to re-impose security over the coastal region.[1] Syrian government reinforcements deployed across to Tartous and Latakia on March 6 in response to coordinated attacks by Assadist insurgents on Syrian military checkpoints and patrols in Jableh, Latakia Province.[2] Clashes between Syrian government forces and insurgents spread overnight to other parts of Latakia and Tartous provinces.[3] The Syrian government deployed armored units, helicopters, and drone units to locate and target insurgents in the area.[4] Insurgents attempted to take control of hospitals across the coastal region and continued to attack security personnel as government forces advanced into coastal cities.[5] The Syrian government deployed armor, helicopters, and drone units to locate and target insurgents in the area.[6] Syrian government forces have killed or captured over 150 pro-Assad insurgents captured since March 6.[7]
The heaviest bouts of fighting between insurgent cells and government forces took place in Jableh, south of Latakia City, where insurgent cells launched coordinated attacks on March 6.[8] Insurgents attacked security forces as government forces advanced north on the coastal highway towards Jableh and targeted security forces with mortars and small arms within the city.[9] Security forces prevented pro-Assad insurgents from besieging a hospital on the Jableh outskirts and re-secured the Naval College in Jableh after several hours of clashes.[10] It does not appear that government forces have fully re-secured the city, however. Likely insurgents continued to conduct attacks in the city, including an attack that sabotaged a high voltage line that caused a power outage in Latakia Province.[11]
Government forces have secured most populated areas, but this does not mean that government forces have defeated the insurgency in these areas. Syrian government forces have secured most of the region’s larger towns but still have not fully eliminated insurgent cells in Tartous and Latakia’s Alawite-majority mountainous countryside.[12] Insurgents also do not wear uniforms and can quickly blend back into the population when they come under pressure from security forces, making them very difficult to defeat in one clearing operation.[13] Security forces advanced into some towns in the Latakia countryside and engaged insurgents, including Qardaha—Assad’s hometown—in order to free dozens of security personnel that insurgents had taken hostage.[14] Security personnel expanded the campaign to pursue insurgents into the southern Hama countryside, suggesting that these insurgent cells have a presence outside of coastal heartland or that insurgents have fled the area.[15]
Government control over most populated areas will not necessarily prevent insurgents from returning, however. That cells of pro-Assad fighters were able to organize amongst themselves and respond quickly to the initial clashes in Jableh suggests that anti-government sentiment is relatively strong. Hardcore Assadists have been able to successfully exploit a variety of grievances against the Syrian interim government to recruit new members who may or may not be initially motivated by a desire to restore Assad. A Syrian near Beit Ana in Latakia said that many young men volunteered to shoot at government personnel after an unknown individual provided them with rifles.[16] Insurgencies against the interim government will likely continue to emerge in these areas until the government addresses the root causes of the Alawite community’s feelings of disenfranchisement and secures the population against abuses from incompetent government security forces.
It does not appear that a...
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