With Assad’s Fall, Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’ Unravels

Tehran’s main regional allies are weakened or collapsing: Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has fled his country, Hezbollah is battered by conflict with Israel, and Hamas is still at war.

By Alissa J. Rubin

Over the past four decades, Iran devoted its best military minds, billions of dollars and sophisticated weapons to a grand project — countering U.S. and Israeli power in the Middle East through what it called the “axis of resistance.”

The alliance, made up of like-minded armed groups or governments in five Middle Eastern countries, allowed Iran to project power as far west as the Mediterranean and south to the Arabian Sea.

But in a breathtakingly short time, it has largely unraveled.

Syrian rebel groups ousted the country’s longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in less than two weeks as government forces put up little resistance. The Lebanese militant and political group Hezbollah and the Palestinian faction Hamas in Gaza are both weakened by more than a year of warfare with Israel.

Still intact are the Iran-linked Iraqi militias and the Houthis in Yemen, but they are more peripheral to the conflict with Israel. So, if Iran were intent on rebuilding its regional alliance, it would likely take years to return to its former strength.

“The most significant regional development is this Iranian strategic loss,” Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said of the collective defeats suffered by Iran’s allies.

Syria under Mr. al-Assad was critical to the alliance because it provided a land corridor for Iran to supply weapons and materiel to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel sought to sever this pipeline. Defending it was just as important to Iran.

With the ouster of Mr. al-Assad this weekend and the future leadership of Syria now in question, as well as the ongoing threat of Israel bombing weapons headed for Lebanon, it appears unlikely that Iran can retain this strategic route.

Syrian opposition fighters celebrating after the Syrian government collapsed in Damascus, Syria, on Sunday.Credit...Omar Sanadiki/Associated Press

“The Iranians suffer a major strategic defeat if the Assad government is replaced by some other kind of government that takes an uncooperative attitude toward Lebanese Hezbollah, because their land bridge to Lebanon is cut,” Mr. Ford said on Saturday, just before the Syrian capital, Damascus, fell to the rebels. “It’s a big blow to any hope Iran may have had for a slow, steady rebuilding of Hezbollah.”

Iran had long propped up Mr. al-Assad, giving him military support to hold back opponents during the country’s 13-year civil war. But advisers and commanders of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards force, many of whom had also worked closely with Hezbollah, started leaving Syria on Friday.

Analysts said Iran realized it could not offer a military solution to Mr. al-Assad any longer, especially given that his own forces seemed reluctant to fight for him.

The Syrian rebels picked an opportune moment to launch their offensive, when Mr. al-Assad’s allies — Iran, Russia and Hezbollah — were either depleted or distracted with other conflicts. The rebel assault began on Nov. 27, just days after a cease-fire in the Israel-Hezbollah war forced Hezbollah to retreat from Lebanon’s border with Israel.

In some corners of Lebanon, there was an expectation that Iran would come to Hezbollah’s aid more forcefully during the war with Israel.

When Israel and Iran traded strikes in April and again in October, Israel, backed by the United States, shot down most of Iran’s missiles. Those that reached Israel did little damage. But Israel was able to penetrate Iran’s air defenses with little resistance.

A pair of armored vehicles abandoned by Syrian government forces on the highway to Damascus, near the town of Suran this month.Credit...Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

All told, these events demonstrated that Iran had limited ability to defend itself and its allies, shattering any notion in the eyes of Tehran’s supporters that it was invincible.

Now Iran appears to be striking a somewhat more conciliatory tone, at least on Syria. Its Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that the country’s future was “solely the responsibility” of Syrians and called for a national dialogue to form an “inclusive government,” according to Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

But also this week, international monitors at the U.N. atomic energy agency said that Iran had dramatically accelerated its enrichment of uranium to close to the level needed for use in a weapon.

The unraveling of Iran’s alliance accelerated dramatically over the past few months.

Hamas, which long ruled Gaza, has been degraded by more than a year of war set off by its Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. There is growing evidence that it is losing its grip on at least parts of the territory and is increasingly unable to govern.

At the end of July, Israel assassinated Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was staying in a Tehran guesthouse under the eye of the Revolutionary Guards. He was there to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

In mid-September, Israel crippled communications between Hezbollah leaders and commanders in the field by exploding their pagers and walkie-talkies.

At the end of September, Israel killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, whose skills as a military and political strategist helped him play a significant role in developing the Iranian regional alliance.

In October, Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah escalated rapidly. Israeli forces blew up much of the group’s sophisticated tunnel and bunker system in south Lebanon in barely six weeks of intense fighting, according to analysts.

Israel’s defense minister estimated that about 80 percent of Hezbollah’s 150,000 missiles and rockets were destroyed. It had one of the largest arsenals in the world in the hands of a nonstate armed group, according to weapons analysts.

The weakening of Hezbollah would resonate far beyond Lebanon.

The group had sent fighters to help Mr. al-Assad during the Syrian civil war and helped train other Iran-backed groups, including Houthi fighters from Yemen.

A Hezbollah supporters in November south of Beirut held a picture of Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

“Hezbollah had been considered a success story for Iran because of 2000 and 2006,” said Hanin Ghader, a Lebanese analyst now at the Washington Institute, referring to the group’s previous wars with Israel. Hezbollah came out far less damaged after the 2006 conflict.

“Hassan Nasrallah proved himself to be the guru of the resistance for the Iranians, and they invested so much in him,” she said, adding that Hezbollah got far more Iranian support than the Houthis or Iraqi militias.

The broader impact of Israel’s onslaught on Hezbollah, which apparently forced the group to call many of its fighters home from Syria, according to diplomats and analysts, was to hollow out Mr. al-Assad’s defenses.

Syria was Iran’s closest state ally in the Middle East. Mr. al-Assad had come to rely on Iranian commanders and units under the control of the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah fighters — whose support helped him survive the civil war until this weekend.

But for the past several years, while the conflict in Syria was seemingly frozen, opposition forces were quietly preparing a new challenge to Mr. al-Assad. When they chose to strike again, Mr. al-Assad’s regime turned out to be a paper tiger.

Israel helped weaken the Syrian government’s grip by launching at least 40 airstrikes inside the country since October 2023, hitting Hezbollah and Iranian commanders.

In addition to Iranian and Hezbollah forces, his government had depended on Russian support, primarily its air force. But Moscow had moved much of its air assets to the fight in Ukraine.

Syria’s own military forces turned out to have little inclination to fight anymore.

Despite this accretion of losses, for many years the alliance has served its purpose in Iran’s view, said Hassan Ahmadian, a political science professor at Tehran University. Iranians believed it would be a deterrent to Israel, not an impregnable defense, he said.

Iran, he said, has always recognized that it was in an asymmetric fight with Israel, which is backed by sophisticated U.S. arms and staunch American political support.  Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, though it has never officially confirmed it.

A bullet-riddled portrait of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who fled the country, adorning Hama’s municipality building on Friday.Credit...Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“The Iranians don’t have either one. But the strategy was to balance those capabilities — nuclear weapons and U.S. backing — with an alliance of like-minded armed groups and governments,” he said.

Longtime observers of Iran warn against counting it out just yet.

“Clearly, Hezbollah has been badly weakened and Iran clearly emerged as the weaker power in its direct confrontation with Israel,” said Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. “But you know, tactical and operational success don’t necessarily translate into strategic victory.”

Hezbollah has not been completely defeated, he cautioned. And Iran is not likely to retreat behind its own borders just yet.

“I don’t think either Iran or Hezbollah see themselves as defeated here,” he said. “And one thing that Iran has shown is that they have the capacity to play a long game.”

Alissa J. Rubin reports on stories across the Middle East, including ongoing conflicts and long-term problems such as climate change. She is based in Paris. More about Alissa J. Rubin