The noticeable collapse of Iran’s strong alliances

For forty-five years, the Shiite theocracy in Tehran has heralded its political system as a model for all Muslim-majority countries—and even beyond. “We must try hard to export our revolution,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared in 1980, after the overthrow of the last of Iran’s two-thousand-year-long monarchies. “We have to confront the world with our ideology.” The core of his government’s strategy has been to build a network of allies overtly and covertly – which he called the “axis of resistance” – to serve as front barriers against Israel, its regional rival.

In 2004, I interviewed King Abdullah II, the Sunni leader of the Hashemite Dynasty in Jordan, who to caution About the “crescent” of emerging Shiite forces that began in Iran, extended through Iraq to Syria, and ended in Lebanon. The Middle East –Take control For centuries Sunni monarchies, tribal sheikhdoms, and authoritarian regimes have been transformed by this Shiite arc, he told me. The rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites, a minority in the Islamic world, dates back to the dispute over political leadership after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, in the seventh century. It intensified after the Iranian revolution.

The international story of the year may be the collapse of Iran’s alliances. In Syria, Sunni rebels overthrew the sadistic Assad dynasty, which had ruled the country for more than half a century. (The Assad family belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of early Shiite Islam.) As the rebels advanced toward Damascus, Tehran suddenly withdrew its Revolutionary Guards and Basij paramilitary forces, which had been deployed to support President Bashar al-Assad. The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told Iranian media: “Some expect us to fight instead of the Syrian army.” Does it make sense for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Basij forces to bear full responsibility while the Syrian army merely watches? Several Iranian generals have been killed in Syria since 2014, most recently in November. Tehran also closed its embassy and evacuated four thousand citizens on emergency flights.

The Iranians “certainly were not willing or able to rescue Assad,” John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, told me. “And in the wake of his departure, it is clear to us that they are reevaluating — I think this is the best way to put it — their presence in Syria.”

In Lebanon, the Shiite leader and military commanders of Hezbollah — the Iran-backed party responsible for massive suicide bombings and the imprisonment of dozens of hostages over four decades — were assassinated in Israeli air strikes. Hezbollah also withdrew its forces from Syria, and admitted that the rebel attack there cut off routes for smuggling military equipment from Iran. In Gaza, the Hamas movement, which had ruled the Strip for eighteen years, was eliminated and its leader killed. In Yemen, Houthi rebels, another ally of Iran, were bombed by the US-led coalition in response to their attacks on ships in the Red Sea. (The Houthis are Zaidi Muslims, another early Shiite offshoot, and have long been opposed by the Sunni monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.)

At home, far fewer Iranians appear interested in rallying around the regime’s triumphant imperative of “confronting the world.” “The average citizen is not sad about what happened in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza,” Nasser Hadian, a political science professor in Tehran, told me. “Falcons believe that resistance must continue. But the average citizen thinks it’s over and is happy about it. The strength of the axis of resistance has diminished significantly. “The reformists believe that it is no longer an important source of deterrence.” Many Iranians fear that the Syrian unrest will lead to chaos, at a potential cost to them if Tehran continues to aid and abet its allies. “We will be in chaos,” Hadian added. “We must leave it. Let the Americans, the Europeans and the countries of the region deal with the matter.”

The Islamic Republic has become increasingly preoccupied with internal challenges. The oil-rich country suffers from chronic fuel and electricity shortages. Power outages led to the frequent closure of schools, government offices and banks. The country’s oil exports, which have been damaged if not hampered by US sanctions, have declined Twenty-five percent Less than Tehran’s official budget needs. After Assad left Syria, the Iranian currency fell to a record low. The exchange rate is approximately eight hundred thousand riyals to one dollar. (A month after the revolution, in 1979, the riyal traded at seventy-five to a dollar.) Since 2017, sporadic protests have challenged religious rule over rising prices for basic necessities, the repression and imprisonment of opponents, and women’s personal rights. The regime is weaker – on multiple fronts – than at any time since Khomeini’s ambitious speech.

At the same time, the loss of regional partners has made Iranians feel more vulnerable. Debate is now raging within the government and in the public sphere over whether the country should step up work on its controversial nuclear programme. Tehran claims the program is for alternative energy, but it already possesses an amount of enriched uranium that exceeds “any credible civilian justification,” according to Britain, France and Germany. Charged newly. US intelligence reported last month that Iran could produce more than a dozen nuclear weapons, although it would still need other advanced technology if it chose to do so. “I had difficulty convincing students that the bomb would not enhance our security and would increase our vulnerability,” said Hadian, who has taught at Tehran University for decades. “They think we deserve it because we are a global superpower — and a nuclear-weapons superpower. “This was true in the Shah’s time and will remain true in the future as well.”

Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor, has noted that public statements by Iranian officials have changed in the past few months, amid strategic setbacks, and that this raises new questions about the shift in their official doctrine. “The thing about foreign policy and geopolitics is that when good things happen, bad things often follow,” he said this week on the 92nd Street Y. He added: “Obviously the opponent that has been hit has weakened them – we can say, this is a good news story. But it also generates options for that opponent that could be very dangerous, and that is something we have to remain very vigilant about as we move forward.

Across the Middle East, the strategic landscape has been transformed this year by physical devastation, death, political vacuum, and poverty. Uncertainty reigns. “2025 is certainly going to be a problematic year,” Marwan Muasher, the former Jordanian foreign minister and now vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Amman, told me. “Syria must teach the Arab world two things. First, the Arab Spring is not over yet, and will not end until the problems plaguing the region – economic prosperity and political integration – are properly addressed. Second, whoever lives by the sword dies by the sword. stability by brute force.

Political risks loom for Syria in the coming months, and could affect its neighbors in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel. The rebel victory was the death knell for the Baath Party, which was founded in 1943 in Damascus as a socialist movement aiming to unite more than two dozen Arab countries. Its slogan was “One Arab nation with an eternal mission.” The branches prevailed in Syria for sixty-one years and in Iraq for thirty-five years, until Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003. The armies that supported both Baathist regimes eventually collapsed with astonishing speed.

Modern He studiesThe study, conducted by political scientists from Georgetown, the University of Virginia and Emory, analyzed governments created by successful revolutions between 1900 and 2020. The study found that authoritarian regimes established by fractured rebel groups were typically short-lived, with armed rivals splintering and organizing. New revolutions. The regimes that survived were generally founded by a single rebel group. Several militias participated in the Syrian civil war, which broke out in 2011. Five parties have controlled territory since Assad fled. The United Nations Special Envoy to Syria, Gir O., stressed. Pedersen said, “What is very crucial in Syria is that we see a credible and comprehensive political process that brings together all of Syria, and all of the communities in Syria.” “We need to make sure that state institutions do not collapse.”

The scale of devastation across the region this year has been horrific, and the death toll staggering. None of the local economies will be able to absorb the shocks any time soon. According to World Bank estimates, seven out of every ten people in Syria live in poverty. The economy shrank by eighty-five percent during the civil war. Lebanon has I incurred it More than eight billion dollars in material damage and economic losses. The economy in Gaza has shrunk by ninety percent; It will take until 2050 to return GDP to pre-war levels. World Food Programme I mentioned This month the region is heading toward famine.

Governments in the region and beyond were grappling with what to do, both individually and with each other. Within a week of Assad’s ouster, many people reversed their policies. On December 14, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States had been in contact with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist militia that led the attack, and which remains on the US terrorist list. “Syria has changed more in less than a week than in any week in the past half-century,” Blinken told reporters. Türkiye has reopened its embassy in Damascus, more than a decade after cutting diplomatic relations as the civil war escalated. In Aqaba, the Jordanian coastal city, a hastily convened conference involving officials from the United States, the United Nations, Europe and the Middle East declared that Syria had the opportunity to end decades of isolation. They committed to “supporting and working with” the Syrian people during their “unprecedented transition process” – particularly without Iran. ♦