IIRC, the Syria dispute was all about Russia. There are significant gas deposits in the ME, and they’d like to send them to Europe to cut off Gazprom. In order to DO that, they need to run the pipelines through Syria. Assad being best buds with Putin, refused to allow that. So, we took it upon ourselves to try to remove him so that we could whack the Russian economy.
That was MY understanding of what they were trying to do there.
In a nutshell, that's it. Same goes for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, particularly eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Do a web search for oil and gas deposits in Ukraine. Putin's primary geopolitical strategy is to control European energy sources.