Humbled Iran Weighs Next Steps After Assad Exit
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Things were looking bad for Iran even before a group of rebel fighters marched on Damascus and forced long-time Tehran ally Bashar al-Assad to flee the Syrian capital.
In a matter of days, the Islamic Republic had lost yet another major branch of its so-called Axis of Resistance. Assad’s fall comes after the weakening at the hand of Israel of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
It all means that Iran is likely, for the time being, to reel back its longstanding strategy of spreading military and ideological influence across the Arab world.
In his first statement on Assad’s ouster, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted today that his country is “powerful and strong” and vowed to replenish and expand its network of allies.
The Fall of the Assad Regime Is a Fresh Blow to Iran
In the past year, the Islamic Republic's key proxies — Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — have been weakened and now its ally in Syria has been deposed.
That’s just before the return of Donald Trump to the White House, with a promise of reviving his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
The government in Tehran is left trying to figure out how to respond, and questions are being asked about the vulnerability of its leadership.
It’s already facing significant internal dissent and economic pain. That strain is in part because the last time Trump was in office he jettisoned a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and clamped down on Iran’s economy.
Reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has signaled he wants to revive a form of that deal, seeing it as key to the Islamic Republic’s survival.
But if things go awry, Iran may follow an old pattern of escalating its atomic activities, raising concerns that it may try to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s something both the US and an increasingly emboldened Israel have vowed will never be allowed to happen.
As the events in Syria have shown, with the toppling of a leader only recently seen as untouchable, nothing can be ruled out across a persistently volatile region.