Iran Update March 18, 2025
Carolyn Moorman, Andie Parry, Katherine Wells, Kelly Campa, Alexandra Braverman, Faris Almaari, Victoria Penza, and Annika Ganzeveld
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.
Recent tit-for-tat sectarian killings and local support for pro-Assad insurgent cells will likely hamper Syrian interim government efforts to promote security and community reconciliation in coastal Syria. Assadist insurgent cells attacked Syrian interim government personnel across Latakia, Tartous, and Homs provinces in early March, which caused a spate of violence and extrajudicial killings across coastal Syria.[1] Revenge killings and kidnappings have continued to take place in coastal provinces over the past week even as coordinated insurgent attacks and extrajudicial sectarian killings by interim government forces have decreased.[2] The kidnappings have targeted both interim government forces and civilians from Alawite, Sunni, and Ismaili communities.[3] Tit-for-tat sectarian killings increase fear and feelings of insecurity among members of targeted communities. This fear makes it less likely that community members will disarm or turn in insurgent leaders because they do not have guarantees from the interim government that government forces will prevent future attacks on the community.
Local notables in Tartous villages have gathered hundreds of weapons to surrender to the interim government but it is difficult to determine what percentage of village residents retain weapons.[4] Local Alawite villages in the same area have refused to turn in around 40 insurgent leaders, which indicates that the residents of these villages support the insurgents or at least are willing to cooperate with them.[5] This support may be predominantly driven by fear that Sunni interim government forces could conduct extrajudicial killings if insurgents are not present to protect villagers rather than by ideological support for the deposed Assad regime.
Alawite insurgent leaders likely designed the early March 2025 attacks to trigger sectarian violence against their community in order to stoke fear among Alawites and thereby increase support for the insurgency. Insurgencies attempt to control local populations by stoking fear and reducing a community’s faith in government forces.[6] The coordinated and violent Assadist insurgent attacks in early March were likely intended to cause interim Defense Ministry deployments to the coast and trigger violent government reprisals.[7]
The Ismaili Shia-majority town of Qadmus and its surrounding Alawite villages in Tartous Province had established a positive working relationship with interim Interior Ministry units since mid-December 2024 but...
[Short citation of 8% of the original article]