The spectacular, rapid collapse of the Iranian axis
Photo Credit: Ben Caspit and Asaad Hanna
Note: Eli Cohen is the pseudonym taken by a Penn student who would prefer to remain anonymous. Please reach out to thepennysylvaniapost@gmail.com with any questions.
Rarely do we witness events that profoundly alter the course of history, and what is happening in Syria is one such moment. Over the past sixteen years, Presidents Obama and Biden have strategically acted to bolster Iran and Russia’s regional posture. In the Arab Spring, President Obama selectively supported the uprisings against pro-Western leaders but declined to back either the Iranian Green Revolution in 2009 or the Syrian rebels against Bashar al-Assad in 2011. He retracted his ‘red line in the sand’ to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, like sarin gas, against the rebels.
These policy decisions resulted in over 600,000 deaths, millions of refugees, and a corrupt bargain that secured Russia military bases along the pivotal Mediterranean coast. It also awarded Iran de facto freedom of operation to smuggle weaponry to Hezbollah to attack Israel and propped up the Assad regime. Even worse, President Obama legitimized Iran as a regional power by signing the 2015 nuclear deal, which lifted harsh economic sanctions in exchange for haphazard monitoring of their nuclear program. However, the deal did not make any requirements for Iran to stop supporting its terrorist proxies, which placed Israel in existential danger.
President Trump cut Iran’s GDP in half through his maximum pressure campaign, which effectively bankrupted Hezbollah’s ability to stockpile and develop weapons and sustain a potential war with Israel. President Biden deliberately relinquished this campaign while trying to engage Assad behind the scenes—taking part in clandestine talks to revive the nuclear agreement that would have removed the Houthis from the State Department’s list of terror organizations. These destructive maneuvers created a triangle of tyranny between Iran, Russia, and Assad that has allowed these actors to fuel proxy wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon.
Nonetheless, Iran miscalculated and may have sealed its fate by green-lighting Hamas’s October 7 invasion and Hezbollah’s rocket campaign. Iran underestimated the resilience of the Israeli public and the resolve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to courageously disregard President Biden’s demands to accede to an illusory ceasefire with Hamas and acquiesce to the bombardment of northern Israel by over 8,000 Hezbollah projectiles. At the tragic price of nearly 2,000 Israeli lives and thousands of Gazan and Lebanese civilians used as human shields by Iran, Israel has all but eradicated Hamas and degraded nearly 80% of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile stockpiles. Hezbollah was seen as Assad’s insurance policy. Now, with Hezbollah a shell of its former self, the Turkish-backed Syrian rebels seized a historic opportunity to upend the region’s balance of power entirely.
In a lightning offensive that lasted a little over a week, the rebels captured Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Daraa, and Damascus. Assad has supposedly fled to Moscow. The unthinkable has happened; the Syrian people have, across ethnic and religious lines, risen to overthrow their murderous Iranian and Russian puppet dictator. With Syria now in the control of the rebels, the Iranian highway of death from Tehran to Beirut has effectively been severed. Russia has lost a critical ally in the Middle East, which could very well hinder its war effort in Ukraine, and, with President-elect Trump’s vow to revive maximum pressure on Iran, it is foreseeable the uprising against Assad could spread to other countries of the Iranian Axis.
For decades, Iran worked to create the Axis of Resistance, spanning from Syria and Iraq to Yemen and North Africa, with the goal of destroying Israel and driving the U.S. out of the Middle East. Now, the Axis of Resistance is collapsing like a house of cards, and, instead, a new axis of resistance is forming against Iran itself – from Israel, Syria, and the moderate Sunni Arab states to the oppressed Iranian people. Indeed, a remarkable revolution could be unfolding in the Middle East. As one Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps official anonymously told the New York Times, “The fall of Syria is the ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ of Iran’s axis.”
It remains to be seen whether the rebels can sideline their extremist elements and prevent Syria from turning into another Afghanistan. The leading rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was once affiliated with the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, allegedly has past ties to ISIS and was involved in the Iraqi insurgency from 2003 to 2006 against US troops. Many Syrians remain skeptical of his proclaimed new moderate transformation. However, al-Jolani’s pledges to protect ethnic and religious minorities, as well as the immediate steps the rebels have taken to grant amnesty to former Assadist soldiers, have left some Western officials cautiously optimistic that he may be keener on maintaining political power than reverting to his old jihadist ways. Throughout the Syrian Civil War, Israel maintained contact with various rebel groups, even treating wounded soldiers in the Golan Heights in Israel. During this rebel offensive, the IDF threatened to shoot down an Iranian plane carrying troops to defend Assad’s last-ditch attempt to stay in power, and they have continued to pummel the remnants of Iran and Assad’s Shia militias. Some rebel leaders have even expressed a desire to establish neighborly relations with Israel – a desire Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed to welcome – but, after October 7, the IDF is taking nothing for granted and is strengthening its positions in the 1974 buffer zone to defend against any possible aggression by Syrian militias.
Though fraught with uncertainties, the organic nature of this revolution hints at a momentum shift against totalitarianism in the Middle East. The incoming Trump Administration must keep its foot on the gas and take the fight directly to Tehran.
Eli Cohen is the pseudonym taken by a student at Penn who would prefer to remain anonymous. Please email thepennsylvaniapost@gmail.com with questions regarding our anonymity policy or to discuss this article with the author.
