The swift collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime represents a devastating defeat for Iran, the latest in a string of setbacks that have punctured long held assumptions in the West about Tehran’s military prowess.
In recent months, Iran has proved unable to thwart Israeli covert operations from targeting key figures in the regime, defend itself from damaging Israeli airstrikes, or protect an ally next door that was a linchpin in its regional proxy network, dubbed the “axis of resistance.”
For decades, Syria has served as a vital land bridge to Iran’s Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, allowing Tehran to ferry weapons to its partners across the Syrian border. After a mass uprising against Assad in 2011, Russia provided air power for Damascus and Iran propped up the brutal ruler with weapons, cash, Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers and militants from Iranian-backed proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere.
But when Syrian rebel forces seized Aleppo last month against poorly trained, demotivated Syrian army troops, Iran was caught off guard at a difficult moment, with its military depleted from Israeli air raids and its proxy forces in Lebanon decimated from fighting with Israel, current and former U.S. officials said. As the rebels pressed ahead, there was no concerted effort to stop the advance with Russian warplanes or Iranian-backed proxy forces.
The dramatic events over the weekend marked “a fundamental change in the equation of the entire Middle East,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Sunday.“Assad was effectively abandoned because his only friends ... Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, no longer had the capacity to help,” the official added.
Iran’s weakened position has challenged prevailing assumptions in Washington and other capitals about Iran’s power and resilience, as well as expectations about how a direct clash between Israel and Iran would play out, former U.S. intelligence officials and experts said.
“You have a series of myths that have evaporated over the last year,” said one former U.S. official.
The United States and other governments had feared an Israeli attack on Iran would produce an overwhelming response against Israel by Iran’s proxies. There also was a widespread view that Iran’s vast missile arsenal would deter Israel from ever directly attacking, and if it did, Tehran might overwhelm Israeli air defenses in retaliation.
And there were fears that a direct clash between Iran and Israel would result in an open-ended conflagration that would draw in the United States and other countries.
None of those scenarios came to pass.
Israeli air raids against Iran did not trigger a crippling response from Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq or Yemen. It was unclear whether those proxy forces lacked the means and the will to act more aggressively, or whether Tehran’s leadership was reluctant to confront Israel directly, former officials said.
With crucial help from the United States and its allies, Israel was able to shoot down most of the ballistic missiles and drones launched by Iran. Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia armed and trained by Iran, have proved no match for Israel’s military and intelligence operations, which have killed much of its leadership and penetrated its communications.
Those incorrect assumptions about Iran “shaped and indeed constrained regional and U.S. policy on Iran,” said Norman Roule, former senior U.S. intelligence official and senior adviser to United Against Nuclear Iran, a nonprofit that focuses on combating threats posed by Iran.
The loss of Syria as a reliable and subservient ally has likely irreparably damaged Iran’s proxy network, which Tehran viewed as a defensive wall protecting Iran and a way of fighting countries with more powerful conventional militaries, current and former U.S. officials said.
“The fall of Assad really puts a big question mark around whether the ‘axis of resistance’ is still feasible,” said Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “Iran paid billions in the last two decades to establish this ‘forward defense’ model — and for a long time it delivered results,” he said.
“But once under pressure, the model and the Arab partners of Iran have proven to lack the capacity to withstand pressure," Vatanka added. "It began with Hezbollah and now Assad."
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president of Iran, wrote on social media shortly before the Assad government collapsed that the fall of the regime “would be one of the most significant events in the history of the Middle East.” Abtahi added that “resistance in the region would be left without support. Israel would become the dominant force.”
Recent events, including the failure to fend off anti-regime rebel forces in Syria over the past two weeks, have exposed a “rot” inside Iran’s military and security apparatus, Roule said.
“Starting with the killing of Soleimani in 2020, Iran faced a series of setbacks and defeats that exposed weaknesses and failures in Iran’s intelligence and security services,” Roule said, referring to Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
“Over the past year, Israel accelerated this rot through its killing of a large number of experienced IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and Hezbollah officers involved in Syria,” he said.
Those officers had decades of experience in Syria and a network of contacts among the militants in Iran’s proxy network, including Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenis and others.
“When those officers and their ‘rolodex’ were lost, Iran’s bureaucratic cohesion and efficiency suffered,” Roule said.
Iran’s intelligence services appear incapable of giving their leaders advance warning about direct threats or disrupting hostile covert operations, according to Roule and other analysts.
It was unclear why commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which oversees the proxy network and has worked closely with the Syrian army, did not take decisive action to rescue the Assad regime’s forces. In both Lebanon and Syria in recent months, Iran has chosen not to deploy its own forces in significant numbers to aid its partners.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, “has traditionally refused to allow Iranian forces to risk themselves to protect proxies,” Roule said.
The loss of Syria has undermined the image Iran cultivated about its Quds Force being an elite military unit able to defeat its adversaries and protect Shiite populations abroad.
Iran now may have second thoughts about the Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year by Iranian-backed Hamas militants in Gaza, which Tehran applauded at the time. The attack, masterminded by the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, caught Israel by surprise but set off a chain of events that have undermined Iran on multiple fronts, culminating in the demise of the Assad regime, according to Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer with experience in the Middle East.
“The Iranian axis of resistance has crumbled thanks to one person, Yahya Sinwar, who started this on October 7,” Polymeropoulos said.
Although Iran has suffered a blow in the short term, it will most likely seek to rebuild its proxy forces, possibly by using Yemen as a hub or exploiting possible chaos in Syria after Assad’s exit.
The United States and Arab partners will need to cut off Iran’s ability to dispatch weapons and trainers to Lebanon to ensure that Tehran does not rebuild its militant network, said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., a former U.S. diplomat.
“I think it’s in our national security interest that we cut off Iran’s capabilities in Syria because that’s how they were transitioning and transferring weapons to Hezbollah, through the ground as well as overflight over Iraq and Syria,” Kim told MSNBC. “And if we’re able to sever this right now, this could be not just a setback but a devastating blow.”
With its air defenses, missile arsenal and regional status damaged, Iran will have to decide how to manage its nuclear program and how to approach the new U.S. administration under President-elect Donald Trump, who imposed severe economic sanctions on Tehran during his first term. Those sanctions have remained in place, and Iran has continued to enrich uranium to levels close to weapons-grade while refusing to fully cooperate with U.N. inspectors over its nuclear program.
But Iran so far has opted to stop short of building nuclear weapons, and may look for a diplomatic compromise with the United States and other powers as it tries to regroup, experts said.
“I think Iran will think twice before weaponizing and will maintain the nuclear card as a bargaining chip, and for now attempt compromises with its foreign opponents,” Vatanka said.
