General
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.
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 the government’s military 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 Houthi militia in Yemen, but they are more peripheral players in the alliance. And even if Iran were intent on rebuilding that 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 money to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel sought to sever this pipeline. Defending it was just as important to Iran.
