On May 3, 2024, Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister of Iran, argued that Israel has not been faithful to its allies since its independence. “Israel does not support anyone in its history,” he declared.
The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, however, shows Zarif got it exactly wrong; it is Iranian allies who no longer should take Tehran’s word seriously. Since the beginning of Israel’s October 2023 counter-terrorism operation in Gaza, Iran’s actions toward its allies show its promises of solidarity to be ephemeral, if not empty.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once described the Assad regime as a pillar of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance.” On May 30, 2024, Khamenei declared: “Resistance is the significant identity of Syria, and this should remain.” Just over six months later, Bashar al-Assad was gone.
When Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham commenced its attacks on Assad regime positions in Aleppo, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps essentially stood down and let the Turkey-backed, one-time Al Qaeda affiliate march on Damascus. This stood in sharp contrast to 2013 when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped Assad organize the defense of Damascus and drive the Syrian Sunni groups back.
As their long-term ally collapsed, Iranian officials sought to pin blame solely on the Assad regime.
The Iranian regime’s willingness to abandon its longtime allies in Syria was evident as soon as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham began its offensive on November 27, 2024. The Iranian regime tightly controls state media, and so rhetorical changes matter and often signal subtle shifts in state rhetoric. Rather than refer to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham as “terrorist fighters,” for example, the Iranian regime media suddenly began using the more neutral wording of “armed group.” This suggested that the Iranian leadership already may have discarded its client in Damascus and wanted to signal a more objective approach to the rebels. Lest Assad not take the hint, on December 7, 2024, the day before Assad fled to Moscow, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi joined his Russian and Turkish counterparts in Qatar and told Iranian state television that there should be a space for a dialogue between Assad and “legitimate opposition groups.”
As their long-term ally collapsed, Iranian officials sought to pin blame solely on the Assad regime. Hence, Behrouz Sabeti, the head of the Cyberspace Headquarters of the Armed Forces General Staff and one of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders in Syria, blamed the Syrian Army’s corruption. “There should have been 400 troops on the front line of defense, but 360 had bribed their way out and were at their homes,” he explained.
The hardline Vatan-e Emrouz likewise signaled a turn from solidarity with Assad when commentor Mohammad Jalili criticized Assad’s harsh policy toward his people, and suggested that the Iranian presence in Syria was “worthless” and that the best policy might be “to entrust the self-made fate of this country to the new desire of its people.”
Perhaps Iranian strategists had grown exasperated with Assad, but cutting loose allies comes with consequences. After all, if the regime was willing to cease its support for Assad in his hour of need, on whom else might Tehran turn? This is, in part, why Mehdi Kharatyan, an Iranian analyst at the Sharif University of Technology, suggested that the collapse of Syria was similar to the fall of the Berlin Wall: “If Iran cannot reconsider its policies toward the region, Iran ultimately loses Lebanon and Iraq and finally loses Iran.”
Indeed, with Assad’s ouster and Hezbollah’s diminishment, the first two dominoes may have fallen. The question now is whether the dominoes stop in Baghdad and Sanaa or will reach Tehran itself.
