Iran’s Axis of Resistance is falling apart. Israel has significantly degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities and decapitated its leadership. Hamas has been left decimated in Gaza. The regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has collapsed. Intact for now are the Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Such a situation is not only a product of geopolitical trends but also an indictment of the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force. This will necessitate a reorienting of Iranian strategy.
2024 has been Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s annus horribilis. Tehran began this year in a stronger regional position, with Israel seemingly entrapped in an endless conflict with Hamas in Gaza leading to its growing international isolation and Iran’s increasing integration. But then events took a turn for the worse for Khamenei beginning in January, when Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy political leader for Hamas and a key interlocutor with Tehran, was killed by Israel. In March, Israel assassinated the Commander of the IRGC Quds Force’s Department 2000, which led its Levant operations, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his senior deputies in Syria. This gutted the IRGC of institutional memory, networks, and experience in a critical theater for Tehran. Zahedi’s successor Abbas Nilforoushan was killed months later.
Then came May, when President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was an important diplomatic liaison with the Axis of Resistance and once known as a representative of the late Qassem Soleimani, died in a helicopter crash. That scrambled succession plans for the supreme leader as Raisi was thought to be a leading contender. In July, Israel eliminated Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran guesthouse, embarrassing Khamenei. Fast forward to the autumn, when the Jewish state launched a series of devastating operations against Hezbollah, killing its leadership, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, his successor Hashem Safieddine, many members of its Jihad Council who were wanted by the international community for decades over terrorism, and longtime senior operatives who were the glue within the broader Axis of Resistance. Nasrallah himself was so influential as a strategist for Tehran that there was speculation that he could even succeed Khamenei as supreme leader.
This is not to mention two Israeli retaliatory attacks on Iranian soil that destroyed air defence systems, leaving its homeland vulnerable to attacks and created bottlenecks in its missile production lines. This has exposed Iran and eroded its deterrence.
Iran’s national security strategy has been unravelling in real time. For years, the proxy network of the IRGC has been a crown jewel in its arsenal, alongside its missile and drone program and nuclear capabilities. As then-Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani proclaimed in 2019, ‘over the past four decades, internal stability, national defence capability, strategic depth, and progresses in new and nuclear technologies have increased Iran’s role and influence in regional and global equations.’ But today, Iran’s internal stability is no longer a given after a series of protests, most recently after the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022; the national defence capability has been dented after Israel’s strike on 26 October on sensitive military sites; and its strategic depth is crumbling with the losses in its proxy network, leaving only its nuclear program which is advancing.
Already, Iranian officials have been expressing fears that the advances of anti-Assad forces are part of a larger plot to weaken Iran. They see a through line from the losses by Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the evaporation of the Assad regime in Syria. Ultimately, Iranian decision-shapers fear that next Hezbollah will be even more exposed, their holdings in Iraq and Yemen will collapse, which will then ultimately pose a threat to the Islamic Republic’s grip on power in Tehran. As Mehdi Taeb, a cleric who is head of the Ammar Headquarters, a think tank that is close with the supreme leader, once said at the height of the Syrian Civil War a decade ago, ‘if we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back too, but if we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran’.
Therefore, this is an earthquake for Iran, given how much it has invested in Syria over years. Some estimates suggest that it provided around $11 billion worth of oil alone to Syria from 2012-21. Leaked documents reveal a total debt owned by Assad to Tehran to be around $50 billion and counting. Other assessments, including by Syria expert Steven Heydemann, in 2015 put the total Iranian support between $15 billion to $20 billion annually. Investments of this nature reflected Assad’s role as a guarantor of a logistics and supply corridor for Hezbollah.
Iran has long been Syria’s closest ally
Iran has long been Syria’s closest ally. The relationship between Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, and Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, began even before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Hafez al-Assad as president of Syria reportedly offered Khomeini refuge in Syria after he left Iraq. Post-revolution, Assad was the first Arab leader to recognise Khomeini’s government, sent him a gold illuminated Koran, and was the lone supporter in the Arab world of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Damascus also historically provided a platform for Hezbollah operations. In September 1983, the U.S. government intercepted messages from Iran’s Intelligence Ministry instructing the Iranian ambassador to Syria to order ‘spectacular action against the United States Marines’ in Lebanon. A declassified U.S. intelligence assessment noted ‘Syria may have provided some logistic support to Tehran in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait in December 1983’.
The first trip Ali Khamenei made when he was president was to Damascus to visit with Hafez Al-Assad in September 1984. This was one the few international visits Khamenei made when he was president and since he became supreme leader in 1989, he has never left Iran. In fact, Khamenei’s trip, which took place on 6 September, came weeks before the bombing of the US Embassy Annex in Beirut on 20 September, leading to suspicions of Iranian complicity.
But strains have existed in the relationship between Tehran and Damascus despite the warm ties and mutual support over the years. A Special US National Intelligence Estimate from April 1985 noted that differences between Syria and Iran centred over Lebanon, especially given the Assad regime’s openness at the time to ‘reaching limited tactical accommodations with Israel or restoring a balance in Lebanese confessional relationships’. In 1986, during an armed conflict between Amal and Hezbollah, Syria and Iran found themselves on opposite sides, with Assad supporting Amal and Iran backing Hezbollah. Years later in 2021, the IRGC’s commander in Syria Javad Ghaffouri was reportedly ousted from Syria over a ‘violation of Syrian sovereignty’.
Soleimani birthed and expanded the Axis of Resistance, and his successor Esmail Ghaani coordinated it following the 7 October massacre by Hamas in Israel. Throughout 2023, it appeared to be working, with coordination reaching unprecedented levels across the axis – with attacks coming from Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Iran even felt comfortable enough to launch its own direct strike against Israel twice. But Iranian leaders have overplayed their hand, leaving the regime dangerously overconfident, overextended, outgunned, and suffering from severe intelligence failures. The New York Times reported on an internal memorandum from the IRGC which suggested surprise over Syria as ‘unbelievable and strange’. A former Quds Force operative Mohammad Reza Gholamreza lamented this month that Turkey provided Iran reassurances that no operation was planned. This has resulted in the disintegration of chunks of the Axis of Resistance. The deaths of a significant chunk of the IRGC brain trust in the Levant over 2024 has only aggravated this situation. As Assad’s regime was sagging and along with it the infrastructure that Soleimani built, his successor Ghaani was pictured at a mourning ceremony in Tehran removed from the destruction.
However, despite the unprecedented defeats, it would be unwise to underestimate Iranian willpower to rebuild and protect its interests. Over the years, Iran’s leadership has made common cause and partnerships with not only Shiite militias but also Sunni extremists. This can be seen with Hamas, its harbouring of Al-Qaeda on Iranian soil, and its resourcing of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which has been a historic foe. Iran almost went to war with the Taliban in 1998 over the killing of Iranian diplomats. But years later, intelligence assessments surfaced that Iran offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill US forces in Afghanistan. The Shiite presence in Syria will also continue to be a recruitment pool for Tehran. The Quds Force still retains roughly 5,000 officers, not to mention the IRGC’s other subunits which remain on the scene. Tehran may seek flexible partnerships with such Sunni actors to protect its interests as much as it can.
Thus, Iran’s grand strategy of seeking to eradicate the State of Israel and push the United States out of the region is unlikely to fundamentally change. But the regime’s strategic depth will be constrained and the means in which it achieves those ends – via its proxy network of partnerships – will have to shift.
The recent events are likely disorienting for Khamenei. At the age of 85 and planning for his succession, the Assad regime in Syria has been at Tehran’s side since 1979, for the totality of his presidency and much of his supreme leadership. Coupled with Hassan Nasrallah’s demise, this is likely to shake the regime, with voices in the political elite already questioning why Tehran has invested so much in Syria only to be left with colossal debts. Assad’s fall could also accelerate a debate within Tehran over whether to develop nuclear weapons, empowering the growing chorus of voices advocating for a change in the Iranian nuclear doctrine to protect the regime. There will be others in Iran who will likely instead counsel negotiations to buy the Islamic Republic time and space as a means of survival.
In the end, Iran faces losses that are unprecedented since the Iran-Iraq War and will have to contend with a new American president who is unpredictable and slated to employ maximum pressure against Iran. With this dynamic, will come a reckoning and a forced reconsideration of its strategy. Tehran may be weakened but is still dangerous.
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