When Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in opposition to Israel on October 7, 2023, he meant to deal a decisive blow in opposition to a strong nation-state—and he succeeded. However the state his assault has devastated turned out to not be Israel, however Iran, his key sponsor.
It’s a persistent folly of progressive thought to consider that wars don’t obtain significant political penalties. The previous 15 months within the Center East recommend in any other case. After struggling terribly on October 7, Israel has pulverized Hamas, ending the risk it posed as an organized army pressure. The problem it now faces in Gaza is a humanitarian and administrative disaster, not a safety one. Israel has likewise shattered Hezbollah in Lebanon, forcing it to just accept a cease-fire after dropping not solely hundreds of foot troopers however a lot of its center administration and senior management. In the meantime, Vladimir Putin’s brutal however botched battle of conquest in Ukraine has undermined his different strategic objectives. In Syria, Russia’s one stable foothold within the Center East, the battle in Ukraine has leached away Russian forces, depriving it of the flexibility to affect occasions.
All of this set the stage for the dramatic occasions of the previous two weeks, as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni fundamentalist militia, spearheaded the seizure of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus and introduced in regards to the overthrow and collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Neither Tehran nor Moscow may do something about it.
The most important loser in all of this—after Assad, his household, his cronies, and presumably his Alawite sect—is Iran. Many years of affected person work assembling proxy actions all through the Center East, particularly however not completely centered on Israel, have collapsed. Hamas was by no means a cat’s paw of Tehran, but it surely obtained weapons and coaching from Iran, and coordinated with Hezbollah, a much more formidable pressure, and one way more tightly aligned with, if not at all times totally managed by, Iran. Hezbollah had helped flip the tide of battle that had flowed in opposition to the Assad regime from 2012 onwards. It stored a pressure of 5,000 to 10,000 males in Syria on the peak of its dedication, however they weren’t alone. Iran organized and educated hundreds extra in dozens of militias, together with a Syrian Hezbollah, and numerous Shiite teams from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. All of them at the moment are on the run.
Iran is a powerful state, within the sense that its persons are deeply rooted in a shared historical past and tradition, but it surely has a comparatively weak army. It has invested closely in proxy warfare with notable success, together with in opposition to america in Iraq. However with the defeats of Hamas and Hezbollah, and with the collapse of the Assad regime, Iran has suffered irrecoverable losses. It now not has a land path to Lebanon; it has misplaced its most disciplined, well-armed, and efficient proxies; and it failed in its two makes an attempt to assault Israel immediately whereas dropping its predominant air defenses in a retaliatory strike.
Russia, too, has suffered a serious loss. The Russian installations on the port of Tartus and at Hmeimim air base have been constructed over many years; it’s exhausting to think about that Russia will proceed to function from them. It has tried to safe naval entry to the port of Tobruk, in Libya, however has but to develop the infrastructure there that it as soon as had in Syria. Russia, like Iran, has been humiliated by its consumer’s collapse, and it, too, now faces a permanent hostility from a Syrian inhabitants that it helped suppress, with a savagery that foreshadowed its conduct in Ukraine.
If there’s a winner right here it’s Turkey, which has supported, though not totally managed, HTS—its personal proxy pressure, the Syrian Nationwide Military, has spent extra time attacking Kurdish militias in Syria’s east than preventing Assad. Nonetheless, Syria’s numerous teams, together with the victorious HTS, know that Turkey would be the dominant exterior energy. The victory of HTS not solely presents Turkey with a possibility to return 3 million Syrian refugees from Turkish camps but additionally extends Turkish affect alongside neo-Ottoman traces. It will likely be attention-grabbing to see whether or not Turkey takes the momentum of this victory to assault Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq or to safe a stronger maintain on Libya, the place it backs the official authorities. In Libya, too, Turkey has pitted itself in opposition to an overextended Russia, which helps the rebellious warlord Khalifa Haftar.
Israel, though cautious each of fundamentalists on its border and of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, can nonetheless be happy on the isolation of Hezbollah and Russia’s eviction from the Levant. It has some purpose to suppose that the rival Syrian factions will probably be centered on each other and their nation’s inner issues, and that they may have little urge for food for attacking a state that proved significantly stronger and extra resilient than it appeared on October 8. Israel, in any case, has a protracted historical past of creating relationships with numerous ethnic and non secular teams in Syria and Lebanon, which successfully now not exist as states.
As for america, it was irrelevant to most however not all of this drama. Its Kurdish allies within the east of Syria, backed by fewer than 1,000 U.S. Particular Forces personnel, performed a small function on this battle, however proceed to play a a lot bigger one within the containment of the remnants of the Islamic State.
All of this presents a tremendous, and amazingly difficult, set of political circumstances. However even because the fog of battle hangs over Syria’s shattered cities—we nonetheless have no idea, for instance, whether or not Bashar al-Assad acquired away—some issues are clear.
The primary is that deeply unpopular authoritarian regimes are typically way more fragile than they appear. Few noticed the sudden collapse of the Assad regime coming. Different authoritarian states, together with Iran itself, might now turn out to be extra tractable in coping with overseas powers, and extra paranoid internally.
The ubiquity of shock in battle is a lesson realized and relearned each few years, as is the centrality of the intangibles—group, planning, the need to combat, management—in assessing army energy. Had one studied the most recent Worldwide Institute of Strategic Research’ “Navy Stability” entry on Syria, for instance, one wouldn’t have guessed {that a} militia it estimated at 10,000 members would overthrow a army of 130,000, backed by hundreds of auxiliaries from Hezbollah and different militias, in addition to 4,000 Russian troops. However so it occurred.
Though wars might remove one set of issues or strategic circumstances, they often create a brand new set. On this case, Iran has misplaced a number of of its claws, however others stay. After struggling a collection of heavy defeats, the regime needs to be terrified—not least as a result of, in accordance with a latest federal indictment, it additionally plotted to assassinate President-Elect Donald Trump. Which will trigger it to hunt to accommodate america, and there are already some hints to that impact. On the similar time, Iran’s strategic publicity and vulnerability give it sturdy incentives to amass nuclear weapons.
Lastly, america has once more been pissed off in its long-standing need, which dates again to the Obama administration, to go away the Center East. The Biden administration’s requires a cease-fire in Syria have been pointless and ineffectual. Together with its failure to anticipate the collapse of our Afghan allies in 2021, and its incapacity to do extra in Ukraine than present sufficient weapons to stop Kyiv’s defeat, it exhibits what occurs when strategic thought withers into good intentions and wishful pondering.
On Saturday, Trump himself weighed in on these occasions. “Syria is a large number, however just isn’t our pal, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT,” he wrote. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” However that decision to remain out of Syria ignores our army presence there, and presents no reply to the query of what to do about our Kurdish allies and their hundreds of ISIS prisoners. However the incoming administration additionally faces a a lot greater drawback: If Iran does certainly select to dash for nuclear weapons, Trump’s White Home should determine whether or not to name within the heavy bombers and forestall that transfer, which might set off a landslide of nuclear proliferation nicely past the Persian Gulf. And it’d face that call very early on.
To paraphrase a well-known aphorism, we is probably not within the Center East, however the Center East is focused on us. The occasions of the previous weeks might but lead Trump to conclude that that is actually not one of the best time to start a witch hunt for wokesters within the U.S. army. And, if he’s confirmed as secretary of protection, Pete Hegseth might but be taught that feminine pilots can drop bombs with one of the best of them.