Nicholas Carl
The
fall of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria marks the end of the
greater Iranian project in the Levant for the foreseeable future. Iran
has invested tremendous energy and resources over the past decade to
build its influence and presence in Syria. This presence helped Iran
project force westward and move materiel to proxy and partner forces
around the Israeli periphery. The sudden loss of Assad deprives Tehran
of its main entry point into the Levant and upends the core assumptions
and ideas that have long underpinned Iranian strategy in the Middle
East. This defeat comes as the other main pillars of Iranian influence
in the Levant—Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon—are badly
diminished from months of fighting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
These dynamics amount to the collapse of the Axis of Resistance’s
western front.
The fall of Assad reverses the gains made
from Iranian policy toward Syria since 2011. Iran intervened at the
beginning of the Syrian civil war in order to keep Assad in power,
expand land access to Hezbollah, and prevent the conflict from
jeopardizing the Axis of Resistance networks in Iraq and Lebanon. Major
General Qassem Soleimani organized a military coalition of Axis of
Resistance parties to fight the so-called “Islamic State” and Syrian
opposition.[1]
Soleimani commanded this coalition through the bloodiest stages of the
conflict and would later oversee the entrenchment of Iranian and
Iranian-backed forces in Syria at unprecedented levels. This military
presence, which lasted up until the fall of Assad, enabled the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to operate freely across much of the
country and to move weapons into Lebanon and the West Bank via Jordan.
The IRGC also tried to move forces near the Israeli-controlled Golan
Heights and station air defense systems and strike capabilities across
Syria in order to defend against and threaten Israel.[2]
The
fall of Assad deprives Iran of these military and strategic benefits
and will severely undermine future Iranian efforts to rebuild Hamas and
Hezbollah. The opposition groups that are consolidating power in Syria
are hostile to Iran, especially given the historic Iranian role
supporting Assad and his brutality. Iran could find itself on overtly
adversarial terms with the future Syrian government, depending on which
specific groups gain control. And the expulsion of Iranian influence
from Syria will make it extremely difficult for the IRGC to transfer the
resources needed to help Hamas and Hezbollah recuperate rapidly at
scale.
The collapse of the Axis of Resistance’s Levant
front comes as Iran itself is increasingly vulnerable. The airstrikes
that the IDF conducted into Iran in October 2024 disrupted the Iranian
ability to produce solid-propellant ballistic missiles and neutralized
the most advanced Iranian air defense assets—the Russian-sourced S-300s.[3]
These airstrikes thus diminished the Iranian ability to defend against
and retaliate for conventional attacks. Iranian authorities separately
face a worsening internal security crisis (although discussions of a
possible revolution or the overthrow of the regime are premature). Large
swaths of the Iranian population have come to the streets in recent
years to protest against the Islamic Republic and call for revolutionary
change. These protests have become more coordinated and violent,
especially since 2022, and stretched the ability of the regime to
control them.[4]
These protests are showing no indication of turning into an insurgency.
But they impose additional costs and pressures on the regime that
undermine its ability to respond as it would like to external
challenges. The regime has, moreover, lost many of the key leaders on
whom it would rely to manage these myriad external and internal crises.
The IDF has killed several influential IRGC officers, who were trusted
by the Iranian supreme leader, in airstrikes in Damascus and Beirut in
recent months, while also killing Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and
Hassan Nasrallah.[5]
It
is unclear how Iranian leaders will respond to these challenges in the
long-term, but they will likely in the short-term prioritize shifting
the center of gravity of the Axis of Resistance eastward to Iraq and
Yemen. Iran is more reliant than it has been in years on the ability of
its proxies and partners to deter the United States and Israel. Iran
will likely spend the coming months and years trying to deepen its
control over these groups and outfitting them with increasingly advanced
strike capabilities. Iran will also likely explore how to prevent
efforts to dislodge its proxies and partners from Iraq and Yemen.
Iranian leaders have almost certainly learned from their experiences
watching the Islamic State march on Mosul in June 2014 and Syrian
opposition forces march on Damascus more recently that they must keep
their proxies and partners secure domestically.
The United
States should exploit Iran’s current vulnerability and weakness to push
back on the Axis of Resistance in Iraq and Yemen. Doing so would
include increasing support for—rather than abandoning—Iraqi leaders who
wish to see their country independent of Iranian influence and
subversion. It would also include destroying the willingness of the
Houthis to continue attacks on international shipping rather than
conducting intermittent airstrikes on their capabilities.[6]
Ceding Iraq and Yemen, on the other hand, would allow Iran and its Axis
of Resistance the space and time to recover. Tehran and its allies may
be down. But they are just as committed as before to attaining regional
hegemony, destroying the Israeli state, and expelling American influence
from the region. The United States and its allies and partners in the
region should capitalize on the positive momentum created by the fall of
Assad.
[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/irans-new-way-war-syria
[2]
https://jusoor.co/en/details/mapping-the-iranian-militarys-footprint-in-southern-syria
;
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-iran-keeps-building-air-defense-network-syria-israel-keeps-bombing-it-1772013
; https://eyeofeuphrates.com/ar/news/2021/10/01/3376 ;
https://sethfrantzman.com/2019/12/12/everything-you-need-to-know-about-irans-imam-ali-base-at-albukamal-syria
[3] https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/the-consequences-of-the-idf-strikes-into-iran
[4] https://www.hudson.org/mahsa-amini-protests-defeat-islamism-iran
[5]
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-air-strike-syria-kills-senior-iranian-revolutionary-guards-member-2023-12-25/
;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/mohammad-reza-zahedi-who-was-the-iranian-commander-killed-in-an-israeli-strike-in-syria
;
https://iranwire.com/en/politics/134463-abbas-nilforoushan-who-was-the-irgc-commander-killed-in-beirut/
[6] https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/ending-the-houthi-threat-to-red-sea-shipping/
