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MANAMA, Bahrain — For Iran's theocratic government, it keeps getting worse. Its decadeslong strategy of building an "Axis of Resistance" supporting militant groups and proxies around the region is falling apart. First came the crushing Israeli campaign in Gaza triggered by the Oct.
7, 2023, attack on Israel by Iranian-backed Hamas. That war spawned another in Lebanon, where Israel mauled Iran's most powerful ally, Hezbollah, even as Israel launched successful airstrikes openly inside of Iran for the first time. Now Iran's longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, is gone.
As dawn broke Sunday, rebel forces completed a lightning offensive by seizing the ancient capital Damascus and tearing down symbols of more than 50 years of Assad's rule over the Mideast crossroads. Ali Akbar Velayati, a key adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once called Assad and Syria "the golden ring of the resistance chain in the region." People are also reading.
.. "Without the Syrian government," he said, "this chain will break and the resistance against Israel and its supporters will be weakened.
" That break in the chain is literal. Syria was an important geographical link that allowed Iran to move weapons and other supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Its loss now further weakens Hezbollah, whose powerful arsenal in southern Lebanon put Iranian influence directly on the border of its nemesis Israel.
"Iran's deterrence thinking is really shattered by events in Gaza, by events in Lebanon and definitely by developments in Syria," a United Arab Emirates senior diplomat Anwar Gargash said at the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Manama Dialogue in Bahrain. "Iran remains a critical regional player," Gargash said. "We should use this moment to connect and speak about what's next in my opinion.
" Only a few years ago, the Islamic Republic loomed ascendant across the wider Middle East. Hezbollah in Lebanon stood up against Israel. Assad appeared to weather an uprising-turned-civil war.
Iraqi insurgents killed U.S. troops with Iranian-designed roadside bombs.
Yemen's Houthi rebels fought a Saudi-led coalition to a stalemate. Syria played a vital role. Early in Syria's civil war, Iran and Hezbollah rushed fighters to support Assad — in the name of defending Shiite shrines in Syria.
Russia later joined with a scorched-earth campaign of airstrikes. The campaign won back territory, even as Syria remained divided into zones of government and insurgent control. The speed of Assad's collapse the past week showed just how reliant he was on support from Iran and Russia, which at the crucial moment didn't come.
Russia remains mired after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. For Iran, international sanctions over its advancing nuclear program ground down its economy. For Israel, breaking Iran's regional network has been a major goal, though it is wary over jihadi fighters among the insurgents who toppled Assad.
Israel moved troops Sunday into a demilitarized buffer zone with Syria by the Israel-held Golan Heights in what it called a temporary security measure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Assad's fall a "historic day," saying it was "the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad's main supporters." Iran's theocratic rulers long touted their regional network to Iranians as a show of their country's strength, and its crumbling could raise repercussions at home — though there is no immediate sign of their hold weakening.
Anger over the tens of billions of dollars Iran is believed to have spent propping up Assad was a rallying cry in rounds of nationwide anti-government protests, most recently in 2022. The loss of Syria does not mean the end of Iran's ability to project power in the Mideast. The Houthi rebels continue to launch attacks on Israel and on ships moving through the Red Sea.
Iran still holds the card of its nuclear program. It can use the potential for building a weapons capability to influence the region. While Iran insists it enriches uranium for peaceful purposes, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned Friday that Iran is poised to "quite dramatically" increase its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium as it started advanced centrifuges.
"If Iran would develop nuclear weapons, that would be a great blow to the international nonproliferation regime," said Thanos Dokos, Greece's national security adviser, in Bahrain. There remains a risk of wider attacks in the region, particularly on oil infrastructure. An attack in 2019 initially claimed by the Houthis but later assessed by experts to have been carried out by Iran temporarily halved Saudi Arabia's production of oil.
"If, as a result of escalation, there are attacks against the energy infrastructure of Iran or Saudi Arabia, that would be bad news for the global oil supply," Dokos warned. Get local news delivered to your inbox!.
