Syria's new authorities had exactly five days to sit with the shock of one attack before another followed .
On 2 July, a bomb tore through a popular café near the Justice Palace in central Damascus, killing ten people. The day after, a hand grenade wounded three Civil Defence workers in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
Days later, on 7 July, twin blasts struck near the Tourism Ministry, minutes after French President Emmanuel Macron left his hotel for a meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa - the most consequential foreign visit Damascus has hosted since Bashar Al-Assad's fall.
Three incidents in just under one week, each closer than the last to the symbols of the new state's authority and its bid for international legitimacy. Taken individually, each could be dismissed as an isolated act of chaos in a country still awash in weapons after fourteen years of war.
Taken together, they read to Syrian analysts as something closer to a pattern, and raise an urgent question for a government banking its future on stability and foreign investment: who is sending this message, and what do they want Damascus, and the world, to hear?
A timed message
The political, security, and military implications of the 7 July bombings near the Tourism Ministry are significant precisely because of their timing and location, political analyst Abdullah Hamad tells The New Arab.
The attack coincided with a high-level visit by the French president and an accompanying delegation of businessmen, at a moment when France is trying to recover a historical role in Syria and secure itself a seat among the primary players shaping the country's future - Riyadh, Ankara, and Washington chief among them - after feeling its influence recede.
“France,” Hamad notes, “was long one of the main backers of the Kurdish-led SDF and recently helped broker its dissolution and integration into Syria's national structures”.
Hamad sees an intelligence dimension in the attack, given its timing alongside Macron's visit and its proximity to his residence, and points a finger at Iran.
“Tehran has been deeply unsettled by the Syrian authorities, who have dealt it more than one political blow, whether through the fall of the Damascus regime or through Syria's distancing itself and severing the corridor that once ran from Tehran to Beirut via Baghdad and Damascus.”
He adds that Syria is now positioned to play major potential political roles going forward, including sidelining Iran entirely from the scene in Lebanon, clipping its proxies, and pressuring Hezbollah into abandoning its weapons for a purely political role.
Who pulled the trigger?
The attacks have reopened an uncomfortable question in Damascus: who carried them out, and why now, just as Syria finally seated its new People's Assembly (a session postponed after the café bombing) and opened trials against former regime figures including Wassim al-Assad, Atef Najib, and former Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun.
Military expert Ahmed Rahal points to multiple pressure points capable of triggering unrest.
“In the south, he notes, sits Uli al-Bas (Islamic Resistance Front in Syria), an Iran-affiliated faction tied to the Lebanese file and to talk of Syrian intervention there - a dynamic that activates Hezbollah and its sleeper cells, along with Iran's, all of whom have an interest in signalling through recent bombings that they remain capable of disrupting security and undermining stability.”
Rahal also raises the possibility of remnants of the former regime , pointing to the trials of former regime figures as a motive, and noting that the device used in the café bombing was a crude, improvised explosive that ordinary people could build.
Political and security expert Dr Hamza al-Muhaimeed likewise considers the ex-regime’s involvement plausible, citing the same detail: a homemade device, easily assembled in any household and small enough to carry in a bag without drawing attention.
“It isn't possible to search everyone on the street,” he says. “Which means they can move such devices without being noticed.” He also points to recent threats issued separately by Miqdad Fatiha and Rami Makhlouf, suggesting both men may have wanted to translate their rhetoric into action and win the trust of their popular base.
Makhlouf, the ousted Assad's cousin and one of Syria's most notorious businessmen , stirred controversy after appearing in a video alleging a plan to alter the demographic makeup of Alawite-majority areas.
He urged members of the sect to remain patient and avoid being drawn into reactions or acts that could inflame tensions, suggesting the coming months would bring further developments along these lines.
A source at the Ministry of Defence, speaking on condition of anonymity, also pointed to ex-Assad officials’ involvement, noting that the café bombing occurred roughly 100 meters from the Justice Palace - the very site hosting trials of former regime officials - and coincided with the state completing its three branches of power and the start of a flow of foreign investment.
“There are parties unhappy about that, chief among them the ex-regime men seeking revenge for Atef Najib and others,” the source told The New Arab , adding that Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani's recent visit to Lebanon, where he received an enthusiastic welcome in Tripoli, may have further provoked Assad regime remnants, Hezbollah, and Iran inside Syria - prompting the attackers to send a message that they can destabilise Syria at any moment.
The Islamic State question
Beyond Assad loyalists and those hoping for his return, another actor looms over the Syrian landscape: the Islamic State (IS).
Rahal believes IS could indeed be involved, particularly given that the group now accuses President al-Sharaa of aligning with the West - an enemy in its eyes - branding him an apostate. He notes that IS's rejection of al-Sharaa's conduct extends to its rejection of the People's Assembly's formation and convening of sessions.
Other analysts, however, disagree. “That isn't how they operate,” al-Muhaimeed says, arguing that IS does not typically target civilians, not out of restraint, but because it favours distinctive operations aimed at a specific commander or high-value target, the kind that leave a mark international media will cover.
“IS does not attack with planted explosive devices but through car bombs or suicide bombers, and its operatives are not typically protected - the attacker usually intends to detonate himself during the act,” he explains.
Al-Muhaimeed's assessment carries the weight of firsthand experience: a native of Deir az-Zour province, he fought against the group as part of Jabhat al-Nusra and was once detained by IS himself.
Is Syria's security ‘breached'?
The café bombing and the twin blasts near the Tourism Ministry followed an earlier attack in May, in the Bab Sharqi area, which killed a Syrian army soldier and wounded others.
Together, the string of attacks has spread a sense of despair among Syrians, leaving many feeling unsafe and convinced that the security file is compromised and that the authorities responsible for it cannot fully do their job.
Rahal pushes back on the idea of a “security breach”. Syria, he argues, is not a settled, stable country; it is a nation emerging from fourteen years of war , one still holding hundreds of thousands of military ordnance pieces and explosives that ended up in civilian hands.
“It's natural, then, for bombings and breaches like this to occur,” he says, arguing the Interior Ministry is doing what it can with the resources available, though he acknowledges it suffers from a lack of experienced personnel, having brought in neither defected officers nor experienced security officers.
“Performance during this period is acceptable,” he concludes, “given the ministry's capabilities and Syria's current conditions.”
Al-Muhaimeed echoes the point: "A breach typically happens in a stable country, not one emerging from a long war. And a breach usually targets specific individuals - state officials, for instance - after surveillance and tracking of their movements”.
What happened, he argues, isn't a failure by the Interior Ministry: when the former regime fell, weapons spread into the hands of many people, and over fourteen years, a large number of Syrians learned to use and even manufacture weapons.
What it means for investment
The timing raises an obvious question: what does a string of bombings targeting the capital, foreign dignitaries, and now first responders mean for a country trying to convince the world it is safe to invest in ?
Al-Muhaimeed believes the 7 July bombing was deliberate and loaded with meaning, intended to make the French president reconsider, to unsettle him, and to project instability.
Rahal agrees the attacks carry an unmistakable negative message for investors and damage investment prospects, particularly in a country that, in his words, “doesn't yet possess the basic ingredients for investment” to begin with.
Yet the bombing does not appear to have derailed Macron's intentions. France and Syria signed 16 agreements and memoranda of understanding spanning political, economic, health, and development sectors, covering maritime and air transport, energy, banking, infrastructure, and digital transformation.
Macron affirmed France's readiness to take part in Syria's reconstruction, announcing the formation of joint Syrian-French economic committees working in coordination with Gulf states to support reconstruction projects.
The Élysée Palace also announced that CMA CGM had signed a new partnership agreement with the Syrian government covering air cargo handling at Damascus International Airport, alongside the completion of earlier agreements to operate two dry ports, first announced in May.
A last throw of the dice
Whoever is ultimately responsible, Hamad frames the campaign as a desperate, last-ditch effort, “playing in stoppage time”, as he puts it, because the international community has already made its decision to move toward opening up to Damascus and backing its stability and government.
The regional picture being drawn by the major international actors, Paris, London, and Washington among them, rests on centralised state authorities and explicitly sidelines sub-state armed groups, he argues - a shift that also closes the door on some of the proxies Iran or Israel have used to destabilise the situation.
For a government counting on that international backing to survive its first year, the question is no longer whether more attacks will come, but whether Damascus can convince investors, diplomats, and its own exhausted public that each one is the last gasp of a losing side, and not the opening chapter of something wider.
Mawada Bahah is an independent Syrian journalist with bylines in local, regional, and international outlets
This article is published in collaboration with Egab
Edited by Charlie Hoyle