How October 7 Led to the Fall of Syria

They must curse the memory of Yahya Sinwar in the corridors of power of Tehran.

Sometimes in history, an individual swings the course of events through a single incident: think of Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 or George Washington firing the first shots of the Seven Years’ War with its ambush of French forces in the Ohio Valley. in 1754.

The atrocity ordered and orchestrated by Sinwar, the late Hamas leader, on October 7 last year proved equally momentous, its consequences reverberating far beyond the killing grounds of the kibbutzim on Gaza’s borders .

Each wave has weakened Iran, harming its ambitions for regional dominance, diminishing its stature and losing its network of proxies and clients across the Middle East.

The latest event, on a larger scale than expected, is sweeping across Syria so quickly that it has triggered total panic in Tehran.

As it became clear that the Assad regime was likely beyond redemption, the Iranian government moved quickly to evacuate its diplomats and military officers from Damascus.

The rush to exit was so outrageous and frenzied that it took a while for stunned observers in the Middle East to realize that Iran was scuttling its decade-long mission to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. -Assad and abandon the Syrian dictator to his fate.

With rebels on the outskirts of Damascus and claims that Assad had fled, the last significant element of Iran’s network of proxies and clients across the Middle East appeared to be collapsing at breakneck speed.

“Normally empires collapse gradually, then suddenly,” said a Western diplomat with years of experience in the Middle East.

“But Iran’s informal empire, its network of influence, is, by historical standards, collapsing very quickly. An emergency recalibration is currently underway in Tehran.

Others compare this to the helplessness with which the communist regime in Moscow watched the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in the late 1980s.

Whether such comparisons are exaggerated remains to be seen, but Western diplomats, analysts and even members of Iran’s armed forces and political establishment recognize that Tehran’s options are dwindling.

If the regime wants to consolidate its weakened position, they say, Iran will likely have to either show pragmatism and begin real, meaningful negotiations with the West or rush to build a nuclear warhead.

As she struggles to adapt to the unpredictability of Donald Trump’s new administration, she may well seek to do both.

Last week, the Iranian government sent mixed messages.

FDI

Mohammad Javad Zarif, one of Iran’s 15 vice presidents, called for negotiations on the country’s nuclear program, saying that Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new, apparently reform-minded president, wanted to “engage constructively with the West” and “manage tensions” with the United States.

However, at the same time, the United Nations and US intelligence agencies concluded that Tehran had rapidly stepped up its nuclear weapons construction work.

A report released Thursday by the office of Avril Haines, director of US national intelligence, warns that Iran has now accumulated enough material to make more than a dozen nuclear weapons.

The next day, Rafael Grossi, the UN’s chief nuclear inspector, confirmed that Iran was quadrupling its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, close to the level needed for a nuclear weapon.

In other words, Iran is about to reach a point where it may have to decide whether or not it is going to go all out, at least for a while, on its nuclear program. Amid divisions and recriminations within the regime, this is not a position that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, wanted to find himself in – not yet, anyway.

A year ago, the Ayatollah found himself in a much more comfortable position, protected – according to him – by a network of proxy and allied militias in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He called them his “axis of resistance,” a “ring of fire” that would not only defend the Shiite Muslim world and Iran’s dominance within it, but would one day consume Israel, a country he swore to to destroy by 2040.

These proxies, coupled with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, have made Iran arguably the most powerful Muslim state in the Middle East, strong enough to be feared by both Israel and the Sunni Arab countries of the Gulf.

Yet the proxy strategy has always been risky. This allowed Iran to project its power well beyond its borders, to commit misdeeds and to wage a war at arm’s length and with the luxury of denial, however improbable it may be.

But the groups he supported did not always follow the beat of Iran’s drums, sometimes pursuing agendas that did not always match Tehran’s wishes.

This was particularly the case for Hamas, a Sunni group that may have been indebted to Iran for providing it with weapons, money and training, but which does not appear to have sought permission from Tehran before launch last year’s attacks.

The Sinwar massacre unleashed waves of devastation that affected Iranian policy in the Middle East as an enraged Israel took revenge first on Hamas and then on Hezbollah, which had joined the fray.

Instead of its ring of fire engulfing Israel, it blew back, burning neighboring states and expensively built Iranian militias until the heat was felt in Tehran itself.

In just over a year, Israel had severely weakened both movements, killing Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, beheading their senior commands and eliminating thousands of their most capable fighters.

The impact was initially less evident in Syria.

Nearly toppled at the start of the 13-year civil war, the Assad regime turned the tide against its various foes thanks to Russian bombers and Iranian support on the ground, provided largely by Iran. Hezbollah, essentially becoming a client state of Iran. in the process.

Yet the truth is that, with Hezbollah’s hesitation, a vacuum was created in Syria, an opportunity that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that seceded in 2017, had passed on. years of training and preparation.

From his northern bases, he seized Aleppo, which Assad’s forces had fought for four years to reconquer, in just four days before capturing Hama, a city that had never fallen to the rebels, crossing destroyed Homs on Saturday. morning and reaching the outskirts of Damascus a few hours later.

Not able to save Assad

Yet in the face of this drastic change in fortunes, Iran looked on helplessly, concluding that, without Hezbollah, it was impossible to save Assad a second time.

As the situation evolved, stunned members of the Iranian military expressed deep frustration at how the demoralized and underpaid Syrian army, still weak beyond a handful of brigades, elite, had simply turned around as the rebels advanced.

“Many have been surprised by their rapid advance and are reluctant to offer full support and send forces this time,” one said. “Some of them say he (Assad) had 10 years to prevent this, but he did nothing because he knew we would be there for him.”

Syrian rebels claimed Sunday that the Assad regime had fallen. The cost of such a decision would be enormous for Iran. Syria provides a vital land bridge that allows it to resupply Hezbollah. A rebel victory would effectively isolate the Lebanese movement, leaving the sea as the only route to rearmament, a less than ideal option. Without Syria, Iran is deeply weakened.

While he had other proxies in Syria in the form of Pakistani and Afghan Shiite units, which Tehran ordered to fall back on Damascus in a desperate attempt to hold the capital, even this was an acknowledgment that none of the two was capable enough to hold power, even if only one launched a counterattack.

Even the Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq were of no use. Not only did we not have enough time to deploy them, but ordering them to deploy across the border would have further strained ties between Baghdad and Tehran, analysts say.

Indeed, deprived of its axis of resistance, Iran’s horizon has been reduced to a choice between pragmatism and, literally, nuclear power.

Pragmatism in the past

Iran has shown pragmatism in the past, adopting warmer relations with the West under the presidency of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997. With Mr. Pezeshkian in power, such a path is more plausible.

The question, however, is whether Mr. Trump would be prepared to accept a rapprochement with Iran.

Although he is keen to make a deal, particularly if it could represent a quick foreign policy triumph, there are many Iran hawks in his cabinet, said Daniel Roth, research director at United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group led by Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.

“Many members of Trump’s cabinet are very vocal about their anti-regime stance,” he said. “There are people like (Secretary of State-designate) Marco Rubio who has spoken repeatedly about the real dangers of Iran. So, at the end of the day, I think Trump is going to be very tough on Iran.”

Sensing Iran’s weakness, Mr. Trump is unlikely to approve anything that appears to be less than the complete dismantling of its nuclear program.

The divided regime in Tehran therefore faces the choice between whether it wants to be a neutralized Iran on good terms with the West or a nuclear-armed country that could drag the Middle East into all-out war.

As for the new Trump administration, it faces a moment of great opportunity – but also great danger.

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