The biggest losers, by far, from the collapse of the Syrian dictatorship yesterday — other than the brutal Assad family and its thuggish acolytes — are the ruling mullahs of Iran.
Their dreams of Middle East hegemony are now in ruins, their genocidal aim of wiping Israel off the map now mission impossible, their ability to supply their murderous proxies across the region with weapons and boots on the ground now crippled.
There are, of course, other losers.
Brutal Russian military might, along with Iranian proxy forces, saved Bashar al-Assad’s skin when civil war engulfed the country after the 2011 Arab Spring. Now, in a humiliating loss of face, President Putin has – in effect – had to admit that Russia has suffered so many losses of men and materiel in Ukraine that it is incapable of sustaining combat on two fronts.
Indeed, far from rushing to Assad’s aid again, Moscow has been withdrawing much of its military personnel and equipment from Syria to bolster its Ukraine-based forces, in the process hanging al-Assad out to dry.
Russia will still try to keep to its Syrian naval and air bases, which allow it to project power in the eastern Mediterranean. But the Kremlin has lost an important client state which enhanced its influence in the region.
Former Syrian president Bashar Assad greets Iran supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
The Chinese are losers too. Syria joined its Belt and Road initiative, designed to spread Chinese power and influence across the globe, in 2022. Beijing is in a joint venture with Syria’s national oil company. All this must now be in jeopardy.
But, in truth, China’s Belt and Road play is running out of steam and Syria is marginal to China’s wider interest. Unlike the regime in Iran, for whom Syria was central.
The evil al-Assad has fled Damascus – destination unknown as I write – leaving the ayatollahs to wonder if their days are now numbered too.
Iran’s decades-old strategic ambitions have gone up in smoke. There is said to be a growing sense of panic in Tehran among the ruling elite. No wonder. If Assad can be so easily toppled, what chance their survival?
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When Hamas terrorists surged across the Gaza-Israel border on October 7 last year to carry out a barbarous killing spree of innocent civilians, few saw it as the precursor to a fundamental redrawing of the balance of power in the Middle East.
Rather, it was yet another terrorist atrocity in a region already infamous for them, even if this one was especially brutal in slaughter and scale.
In reality, it has upended the geopolitics of the Middle East, whose modern history can now be divided into two parts: before October 7 — and after October 7.
Just look at the seismic developments since that fateful day. Hamas, armed and financed by Iran, is all but destroyed as a fighting force, its Gaza base in ruins.
Hezbollah, the most powerful of all Iran’s proxy forces, came to the aid of Hamas with rocket attacks on Israel from its southern Lebanon bases. Israel retaliated by crippling Hezbollah too.
In little more than a year, Israel decapitated the high commands of Hamas and Hezbollah, killing thousands of their most battle-hardened fighters.
Iran built them up, at huge expense, to be omnipresent threats to Israel on its very borders, the advanced guard of its mission to engulf Israel with enemies and destroy it. These threats are no more.
When Iran’s puppet regime in Damascus started to totter in the face of a renewed rebel onslaught last month, Hezbollah (like Russia) was in no shape to come to Assad’s aid, as it had in the past. Tehran reluctantly realised that the regime was beyond saving.
Instead of deploying its own forces to prop up its client dictator, Iran’s diplomats and military personnel scuttled for the exit. Assad’s days were numbered. But Iran didn’t just abandon Syria. It has effectively abandoned Hamas and Hezbollah too, for without Syria it is much more difficult to rebuild and rearm them, as I will explain.
Years ago, I remember the then young King of Jordan (he’d just succeeded his father) explaining to me how the aim of Tehran’s ayatollahs was to become the dominant power in the Middle East by creating a huge arc of military power and influence stretching from Iran through Iraq into Syria and down into southern Lebanon.
Rebels celebrate in Damascus today after overthrowing the Assad regime
Iran was a Persian, Shi’ite Muslim force in a largely Arab, Sunni Muslim world. But it would rally the region by being the most virulently anti-Israel voice, thereby staking its claim for the leadership of Political Islam, with powerful proxy forces to lean on the unconvinced.
Progress was impressive. It helped the Shi’ites take control of post-Saddam Iraq, it came to the aid of Assad (whose minority Alawite clan is a Shi’ite sect) when his regime was threatened with civil war and it built up Shi’ite Hezbollah to become the most powerful force in Lebanon. Yet what took decades to build has been undone in a year.
The loss of Syria is the most serious blow yet. It was through Syria that its supply chain of weapons reached Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian terrorists on the West Bank and, through Syrian shipping ports and airports, its proxies in Yemen and beyond.
Revolutionary Guard bases were established on Syrian soil further to intimidate Israel. These bases and supply chains are now shattered as Iran’s network of proxies and clients across the Middle East crumbles.
Israel stands vindicated in its uncompromising stance post-October 7. Palestinians who thought Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran were the routes to a better future have, yet again, made the wrong call.
It is worth noting, before fashionable opinion sweeps it under the rug, that Iran is now reeling because Israel ignored the foreign policy pressure of its Western allies and their liberal media echo chambers to hold back.
Washington, London and Paris all urged Israel to show restraint against Hamas and not to open a second front against Hezbollah. The New York Times, the BBC and Le Monde piled on the pressure for Israel to back off by constantly highlighting the humanitarian cost of the conflict, usually with suspect Hamas statistics.
But Israel took only cursory notice, pursued its own interests and did us all a favour.
Israel today can feel that bit safer. America is happy that the Assad regime is no more and Iran has been put in its box. But, like its European allies and Israel, it worries about what now fills the vacuum in Syria.
Donald Trump is anxious to avoid foreign entanglements and, in truth, there is no appetite on either side of the aisle in Washington to get involved in Syria.
But there are still 900 US troops in the south of the country, Assad leaves behind a stockpile of chemical weapons and a new Islamic State cannot be allowed to take root. So the Trump administration cannot entirely wash its hands of post-Assad Syria.
But the bigger headaches are in Tehran. Its foreign policy is in ruins, its reputation in the mud and its options limited. It could eschew the sabre-rattling and try to become more accommodating. That would be wise given the collapse of its allies and the formidable alliance — Israel, America, the Sunni Arab Gulf States — now arraigned against it.
But for the hardliners, the best way to regain the initiative and restore national pride is to up the pace of Iran’s nuclear programme. Last week, US intelligence reported that Iran had now accumulated enough material to make more than a dozen nuclear weapons.
The people of Iran, of course, might have their say first. They have never shared the regime’s anti-Semitism, its obsession with Israel, its imperialist expansion, or its passion for mediaeval theocracy.
They have watched billions squandered (as everyone can now see) on the likes of Hezbollah, while their lives are blighted by soaring inflation, high unemployment, failing public services and overall repression.
I do not claim the ayatollahs are yet tottering. But they have never been more vulnerable. The smell of regime change is in the Tehran air.