When Yahya Sinwar of Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa debacle against Israel on October 7, 2023, he intended to deal decisively with the powerful nation-state. And he succeeded. But the state his attack destroyed turned out to be non-Israeli. But it’s Iran. His main supporter
It is the folly of progressives to believe that wars do not achieve meaningful political results. The past 15 months in the Middle East have shown otherwise. After suffering terrible suffering on October 7, Israel crushed Hamas. and end the threat they pose as a military force. The challenge currently facing Gaza is a humanitarian and administrative crisis. It is not a security crisis. Israel has also destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon. forcing them to accept a ceasefire after the loss of thousands of infantry soldiers But it has also lost many middle and top executives. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s brutal but failed war against Ukraine has undermined his other strategic goals in Syria, one of his bases. Russia’s solid foothold in the Middle East The war in Ukraine has consumed Russian forces. As a result, they are unable to influence events.
All of this has led to a dramatic series of events over the past two weeks as Sunni militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Spearheaded the capture of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus and led to their overthrow and collapse. of Bashar’s regime Al-Assad in Syria Neither Tehran nor Moscow can do anything about this.
The biggest loser in all of this, after Assad, is his family. his relatives And probably his Alawi sect is Iran. Decades of patient work uniting representative movements across the Middle East Particularly, but not specifically focused on Israel, has collapsed. Hamas has never been Tehran’s paw. But it receives weapons and training from Iran. and coordinate with Hezbollah which is a much more formidable force And another force was firmly in line. Hezbollah has helped turn the tide of opposition against the Assad regime from 2012 onwards. It maintains between 5,000 and 10,000 troops in Syria according to utmost determination But they are not alone. Iran organizes and trains thousands more in dozens of armed forces. Including the Hezbollah group in Syria. and various Shiite groups from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, all of them now fleeing.
Iran is a strong state. In the sense that its people are deeply rooted in a shared history and culture. But it has a relatively weak military force. It has invested heavily in proxy warfare with remarkable success. Including opposition to the US in Iraq, but with the defeat of Hamas and Hezbollah. and the fall of the Assad regime Iran thus suffered irreparable losses. There is no longer a land route to Lebanon. It has lost a disciplined proxy. fully armed and most effective and failed in two attempts to directly attack Israel. At the same time, it lost its main air defenses in the counterattack.
Russia also suffered huge losses. Russian installations at the port of Tartus and at the Hmeimim air base have been built for decades. It is difficult to imagine that Russia will continue to operate from them. It has attempted to maintain naval access to the Libyan port of Tobruk but has not yet developed infrastructure there as it once did in Syria. Russia, like Iran, has been embarrassed by the collapse of its clientele. And now it is facing long-standing hostility from the Syrian population it helped suppress. with the ferocity that characterized Russia’s behavior in Ukraine.
If there’s a winner here That is Türkiye, which supports, although does not entirely control, HTS, its own proxy force. which is the Syrian National Army Syria has spent more time attacking Kurdish militias in eastern Syria than fighting Assad. Yet Syrian factions, including the HTS, have emerged victorious. It knew that Turkey would be the dominant external power. An HTS victory would not only give Turkey the opportunity to return 3 million Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey. but also expanded Turkish influence along neo-Ottoman lines. It will be interesting to see how Türkiye uses the momentum from this victory to attack Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq. or to strengthen its hold on Libya which Türkiye officially supports the government in Libya as well Türkiye faces an overextended Russia. which supports rebel warlord Khalifa Haftar
Israel, although wary of both fundamentalists on its border and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, is nevertheless happy to isolate Hezbollah and expel Russia from the Levan. t There is some reason to think that the rival Syrian factions will focus on each other and their countries’ internal problems. And they will have little appetite for attacking a state that has proven to be much stronger and more resilient than it appeared on October 8. Israel, in any case. It has a long history of building relationships with various ethnic and religious groups. in Syria and Lebanon which no longer exists as a state
For the United States This story is unrelated to most, but not all, of this drama. The Kurdish alliance in eastern Syria, backed by fewer than 1,000 U.S. special forces, has played a small role in the war. But it still plays a much bigger role in containing remnants of the Islamic State.
All of this presents an amazingly dramatic and complex political situation. But even as the fog of war hangs over Syria’s shattered cities—we still don’t know Bashar. Al-Assad has fled or not—a few things are clear.
The first is that deeply unpopular authoritarian regimes tend to be much more fragile than they appear. Few saw the sudden collapse of the Assad regime coming. other totalitarian states including Iran itself There may now be a way to make dealing with foreign powers easier. and there is more paranoia within
The pervasive surprise of war is a lesson learned and relearned every few years, as is the centrality of intangibles such as organization, planning, the will to fight. leadership in evaluating military power Most recently studied at the Institute of International Strategic Studies’military balance“Entering Syria No one could have guessed that a militia estimated at 10,000 members would overthrow the 130,000-strong army, which is supported by thousands of reinforcements from Hezbollah and other armed forces. Including 4,000 Russian troops, but it happened.
Although war may eliminate a particular set of problems or strategic situations, But they often create new ones. In this case, Iran lost many of its claws. But there are still many that remain. After suffering many heavy defeats, The government must be fearful—not least because, according to recent federal data. indictmentand also planned to assassinate President Donald Trump too That might make the United States Trying to find a way to support the United States. And there are already some suggestions to this effect. at the same time Iran’s strategic exposure and vulnerability provide strong incentives to acquire nuclear weapons.
The United States has finally disappointed once again in a long-standing wish that dates back to the Obama administration. to leave the middle east The Biden administration’s calls for a ceasefire in Syria are pointless and ineffective. This is in addition to the failure to foresee the collapse of our Afghan alliance in 2021 and the inability to do more in Ukraine than provide adequate weapons to prevent Kiev’s defeat. It shows what happens when strategic thinking withers into good intentions and strong desires.
last Saturday Trump himself weighed in on these events. “Syria is a mess. It is not our friend, and the United States should do nothing about it,” he wrote. “This is not our fight. Let it play out Don’t get involved!” But calls to stay away from Syria ignore the presence of our soldiers there. And there is no answer to the question of what to do with our Kurdish allies and their thousands of ISIS prisoners. But the incoming administration also faces much bigger problems. If Iran really chooses to pursue nuclear weapons, The Trump White House will have to decide whether to call in heavy bombers and block the move. This will also cause a landslide of nuclear proliferation. Beyond the Persian Gulf And maybe face that decision early on.
To paraphrase a famous aphorism. We may not care about the Middle East. But the Middle East interests us. Various events The past week may have led Trump to conclude that this is not the best time to start a witch hunt in the US military. And if he’s confirmed as Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth might learn that female pilots can drop bombs with the best of them.
