IT TOOK just 12 days from the moment Syrian Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a renewed offensive against president Bashar al-Assad for the rebels to topple his government.

Those who tuned in to news programmes and political podcasts during that brief period of fighting will have heard experts on the region venture a range of mistaken prognoses. We would not presume to know better.

The ouster of Assad has widely been welcomed in the West. But there is unfortunately no guarantee that what comes next will be soothing to the sensibilities of either foreign policy liberals or hawks. Two cheers at best for developments in Damascus.

To paraphrase an immortal aphorism from former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger in the context of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, it was perhaps a pity that both sides couldn’t lose.

Many in our industry have been much buffeted by developments in international politics in recent years, not least the de facto closure of the Red Sea on account of the Houthi onslaught on merchant tonnage. What next, they wearily sigh.

Of course, our first thoughts will be with the people of Syria itself, who still need to be supplied with food and other essentials and who deserve to enjoy a release from repression after 53 years of dictatorship and 13 years of particularly brutal civil war.

But there are shipping-specific concerns too. Security consultancy Ambrey advised vessels to give Latakia a miss right now, following Israeli air strikes on Syria’s most important port, targeting the remnants of Assad’s military naval capacity.

India’s Directorate General of Shipping went further and strongly advised Indian seafarers not to sign on or off anywhere in Syria.

No shipping casualties were reported and data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence suggests that no merchant vessels were alongside at the time.

But that conclusion cannot be conclusive. Many vessels trading to Syria switch off their AIS, making the data unreliable.

To the best of our knowledge, calls at Latakia typically number two-dozen a month or so, with Latakia handling an annual throughput of about 500,000 teu.

Speculators in Chinese container freight futures traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange may also be feeling nervous right now.

The upside case advanced by some of those investors is that the overthrow of Assad marks a further step towards peace in the Middle East.

On this reading, it will build on the US-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon, which seems to be holding up, if somewhat tenuously.

In so far as Syria developments weaken the standing of Assad’s sponsors in Tehran, it could weaken Iran’s proxies elsewhere, including the Houthis in Yemen responsible for the missile and drone strikes in the Red Sea.

But not everyone will buy that argument. As polling at the recent Lloyd’s List Outlook Forum demonstrated, most industry professionals do not expect a return to normality in the Red Sea before 2026 at the earliest.

There is also the issue of the Iranian wing of the dark fleet*, which has carried the majority of Syria’s energy imports in recent years, running to around 70,000 barrels per day of late.

There are reports of one Iranian suezmax making a U-turn in the Gulf of Suez on hearing of HTS’s impending triumph.

There is little prospect of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani emerging as Donald Trump’s new best friend.

Indeed, given the pro-Assad stance of Tulsi Gabbard, the president-elect’s nominee as Director of National Intelligence, the relationship is set to be strained.

But Jolani is hailed as a pragmatist, by the standards of heavily armed Salafi Jihadist militia bosses anyway, and Trump is famously open to the art of the deal.

There have been suggestions that Syria could now turn to the West as an energy supplier, at least until such time as it can restart its once-considerable domestic drilling operations.

Marine insurers will presumably be happy to write the war risk on tankers taking the bookings, although only at a price they deem commercially worthwhile.

Iran is now tasked with finding alternative buyers, which may prove challenging at a time when China is reducing purchases. Cheap oil cargo, anybody?

As we argued above, it would be foolish to advance confident predictions about what happens next, especially given the ongoing fighting in the wider neighbourhood.

But shipping will be able to lend its hand to relief efforts, and if some sort of stability proves possible, there will ultimately be a need for project cargoes to facilitate the reconstruction.

Syria needs to rebuild. Let the industry help it.

* Lloyd’s List defines a tanker as part of the dark fleet if it is aged 15 years or over, anonymously owned and/or has a corporate structure designed to obfuscate beneficial ownership discovery, solely deployed in sanctioned oil trades, and engaged in one or more of the deceptive shipping practices outlined in US State Department guidance issued in May 2020. The figures exclude tankers tracked to government-controlled shipping entities such as Russia’s Sovcomflot, or Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co, and those already sanctioned.

Download our explainer on the different risk profiles of the dark fleet here