Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attends a meeting in Baghdad, Dec. 6, 2024. (Credit: AFP)
Tehran is the big loser in this sequence. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Sunday marks the steady collapse of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.” Fourteen months after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Iran and Hezbollah have lost the upper hand in Syria, where they intervened in 2011 to shore up power in Damascus. Today, they are at risk of losing ground in Iraq. With the overthrow of the five-decade-old regime, which acted as a channel between Tehran and Hezbollah, the question of whether Khamenei’s regime will survive then arises, particularly since it relies on a regional network of militias to project its power. As Iran faces a new reality in its former theater of influence, it seems hard to imagine that the Sunni rebels would find common ground with Iran, when the Shiite country is perceived as an enemy that crushed the 2011 popular...
Tehran is the big loser in this sequence. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Sunday marks the steady collapse of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.” Fourteen months after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Iran and Hezbollah have lost the upper hand in Syria, where they intervened in 2011 to shore up power in Damascus. Today, they are at risk of losing ground in Iraq. With the overthrow of the five-decade-old regime, which acted as a channel between Tehran and Hezbollah, the question of whether Khamenei’s regime will survive then arises, particularly since it relies on a regional network of militias to project its power. As Iran faces a new reality in its former theater of influence, it seems hard to imagine that the Sunni rebels would find common ground with Iran, when the Shiite country is perceived as an enemy that crushed the 2011...