The change of power on Sunday in Damascus should reshuffle the cards in the Middle East. The fall of Bashar al-Assad caused Iran to lose a centerpiece of its “axis of resistance” against Israel, after its other ally, Hezbollah, emerged weakened from a war against sworn enemy of the Islamic Republic.
Syria, which shares a long porous border with Lebanon, has long played a strategic role in supplying weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah. “Syria is on the front line of resistance” against Israel and is “a pillar” in this fight, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly emphasized. The “axis of resistance” brings together armed groups around Iran united in their opposition to Israel. In addition to Hezbollah and Assad’s Syria, it brings together Hamas in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
A blow against support for Hezbollah
The fall of Assad therefore amounts to a new blow for Iran. In recent months, Israel has decimated the leadership of Hamas in Gaza but also that of Hezbollah in Lebanon, where its charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in September in an Israeli raid.
“The main objective (…) of a regime change in Syria was to cut off the arm of Iran” that is to say its influence in the Middle East, according to academic Mehdi Zakerian, expert in international relations in Tehran. With its influence now threatened in Syria, Iran “will no longer be able to support Hezbollah as before”.
After the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, Iran sent what it described as “military advisors” to support Bashar al-Assad’s army. Now, the situation has changed: during the fall of Damascus in the hands of rebels led by radical Islamists, the Iranian embassy in Damascus was ransacked by individuals, an act until then unimaginable.
Iran’s policy towards the new Syrian power will depend “on developments in Syria and in the region, as well as the behavior of the actors” on the ground, warned Iranian diplomacy, in its very first comment on the departure of Bashar al-Assad.
Vocabulary change in Tehran
“Bashar was an opportunity for Iran, but he did not pay enough attention to the recommendations of the Islamic Republic,” further criticized the Iranian news agency Fars, in a rare critical comment on the Syrian president. Tehran called on Saturday the “Syrian government and legitimate opposition groups” to begin negotiations.
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This statement from the head of diplomacy Abbas Araghchi seemed to mark a change in tone from Iran, which described any form of opposition in Syria as “terrorism”. Because Tehran will have to deal with the new regime in Damascus, on the geostrategic level for example Syria allows Tehran to have an ally with access to the Mediterranean.
