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Assad’s collapse is a strategic crisis, exposing Tehran’s failed regional policy and signaling a shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics.
By MEHRDAD MARTY YOUSSEFIANI DECEMBER 14, 2024 11:36
IRAN’S SUPREME Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addresses a gathering in Tehran this week. Facing an existential crisis, Iran may have no choice but to escalate hostilities, the writer warns.
(photo credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters)
The lightning-speed collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad represents not just a turning point for Syria but a seismic geopolitical shift in the Middle East.
For the faltering Iranian strategy in the region, Assad’s collapse evokes comparisons to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall – a harbinger of regime disintegration. Within two years of the Berlin Wall’s collapse, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, after which Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned his own regime about the risks of “overextension” as an important “lesson to be learned” from the Soviet demise.
Apparently, however, it seems he failed to heed that lesson.
In the aftermath of Assad’s exit, Iran’s loss feels existential. Assad, as the lifeline of Iran’s regional proxy strategy, was propped up by more than $50 billion in Iranian aid and the sacrifice of thousands of Iranian and proxy personnel. As Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s late leader once proclaimed: “Syria is the backbone of the Axis of Resistance.” Yet Assad’s collapse signals a decisive de facto defeat of Tehran’s long-standing strategy to dominate the Levant, reminiscent of the destruction of a key pillar holding up its Shia Crescent.
Iran’s new strategy: Obstructing Syrian statehood
Bashar Assad's seeking refuge in Moscow rather than Tehran further embarrassed Khamenei, revealing the ayatollahs’ diminishing regional influence. Without Syria, Iran’s power projection through its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank is significantly deteriorated. Consequently, alternative Shia voices like Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani are poised to challenge Khamenei’s militant brand of Iranian Shiism.
Khamenei’s growing isolation further destabilizes his domestic position by emboldening widespread popular discontent and the triggering of fissures within his own power base.
Thus, the Iranian regime’s priority will likely be to thwart rebel leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani’s state-building in Syria. This aligns with Tehran’s masterful exploitation of conflict zones, driven by militancy and antisemitism.Jolani, radicalized by the Second Intifada and by his family’s 1967 expulsion from the Golan Heights, could serve Tehran’s objectives. If the latest celebratory statements Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the fall of Assad are any indication, it is not very difficult to imagine that Iran’s strategy to undermine a stable statehood in Syria will not succeed.
Erdogan as kingmaker
For Turkey, Assad’s collapse presents an opportunity to assert regional power. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, challenged domestically, has positioned himself as a strategic kingmaker, leveraging Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebels to expand Turkish influence in Syria. Rooted in Ottoman Empire nostalgia, which ruled Syria and the Levant for 400 years, Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions aim to challenge Syria’s Arab neighbors and non-Arab regional players by championing Sunni Islam.
However, HTS’s jihadist track record and Syria’s tyrannical statehood history offer little hope for successful state-building. Despite Erdogan’s attempt to rebrand the rebel group, fears remain that Jolani’s political raison d’être will eventually prioritize sectarianism over inclusive secular governance.
The geopolitical chessboard
Turkey’s rivalry with Greece, tensions in Cyprus, and assertive Mediterranean policy suggest an ideology redefining Ankara’s global role to deflect domestic challenges. The EU, lacking hard power, has limited means to stem Erdogan’s ambitions. His bid for regional dominance aligns with efforts to contain Iran, exemplified by his pursuit of the Zangezur Corridor in the Caucasus.
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The Persian Gulf Arab states’ doubling down on the UAE’s position on Iran’s three Persian Gulf strategic islands complements the effort to pressure Iran from the north and south, which also aligns with President-elect Donald Trump’s intention to exert punitive maximum pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Assad’s collapse is a strategic crisis, exposing Tehran’s failed regional policy and signaling a shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Fourteen months after Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, which Khamenei proudly spun as “the most important event in the resistance,” the Axis of Resistance appears to be dismantled.
Decimated by Israeli strikes and humiliated by Erdogan’s proxy now ruling Syria, Tehran feels cornered, but it cannot back off strategically. It cannot retreat from the fundamentals of the Islamist Revolution, which stand on the three pillars of anti-Westernism, antisemitism, and misogyny. Khamenei’s political calculus is calibrated on the notion that any form of retreat will reduce the regime’s chances of survival.
Concerned about the regime’s implosion under pressure, Khamenei will pursue the dual track of “Zarif diplomacy” in an attempt to flip the chessboard, while his Islamic Guards will signal the fast-tracking of the nuclear program and maybe even the launch of another barrage of missile toward Israel. In that case, whatever the strategic response from Jerusalem or Washington may be, the most reliable ally for regional peace is the democratic movement of the Iranian people.
Mehrdad Marty Youssefiani is an Iranian-American member of the board of fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. He previously served as a senior strategic counselor to Iran’s former crown prince. Damon Golriz is an Iranian-Dutch lecturer at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and a strategic analyst at The Hague Institute for Geopolitics in the Netherlands.
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