Assad’s fall jolts Iran’s increasingly vulnerable leadership

The tanker carrying oil from Iran had been sailing to Syria with critical supplies when it was forced into a U-turn just before entering the Suez Canal. Word of President Bashar al-Assad’s downfall had reached the vessel, with the cargo’s sender reduced from a powerful, longtime sponsor of his regime to a mere spectator of its demise.

In a matter of days, the Islamic Republic had lost one of the last men standing in its so-called Axis of Resistance, leaving its foreign policy effectively in tatters.

Officials in Tehran this week sought to play down the significance, saying they had seen it coming and blaming Assad for intransigence. But as the world weighs the consequences of Assad’s ouster and its impact on Middle East dynamics, Iran is left scrambling to figure out how to respond with questions over the vulnerability of its leadership.

The theocracy already faces major levels of internal dissent and economic pain. With the depletion of its other key allies — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — Iran is now likely to reel back its longstanding strategy of spreading military and ideological influence across the Arab world while girding for the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

“Iran has to contain itself somewhat now,” said Saeed Laylaz, an economist and former adviser to reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami. “The danger to Iran isn’t from Syria or what happens with the axis, it’s from within.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV the government had some weeks ago been informed that Assad was losing his grip on Syria. Yet, the Syrian army’s immediate retreat and lack of resistance to advancing rebels took Araghchi and his colleagues by surprise.

Just days before Assad’s downfall, Araghchi had shared a photograph on social media of himself enjoying a shawarma, a traditional Arab street food, in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The speed of events “left everyone astonished,” he said after reports emerged on Dec. 8 that Assad had been granted asylum in Moscow. He also blamed Assad for being “too slow and inflexible” as opposition forces led by former al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took over.

Senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which had dozens of senior military advisers stationed in Syria until the weekend, have been insisting that Iran’s Axis of Resistance will continue.

But with Turkey, Israel, Russia and western powers all seeking to assert their interests, it’s unclear whether Iran will have any influence over a country that was its most steadfast ally since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. It also comes after Hamas and Hezbollah, designated as terrorist organizations by the US and allies, were crippled, losing their leaders in recent months to Israeli strikes.

On Tuesday, top Iranian officials were continuing to frame the upheaval in Syria as a discrete event that could be easily explained. The government’s spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, told reporters Assad hadn’t engaged in “national dialogue.” Her colleagues, meanwhile, are busy working on that in Iran, she said.

Iran is “selling” its withdrawal from Syria as a choice because of frustration with Assad, according to Sanam Vakil, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. That also gives it time to assess the damage before trying to rebuild its regional network, she said.

Tehran will also be focused on how to prepare for Trump’s return and the prospect of a replay of the US president’s first term in office. Trump jettisoned the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers before waging an effective war on Iran’s economy.

Reviving that deal is at the top of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian’s agenda. He sees it as key to the Islamic Republic’s survival, enriching the country, attracting investment and reinjecting hope in the swathe of the population that’s been rebelling against the clerical system in power for more than 45 years.

The alternative could be more worrying. One wildcard is if Tehran decides to go for nuclear weapons, according to Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft. “An increasingly cornered Iran could bring its own risks, especially amid growing concerns over Tehran’s continued nuclear advances,” he said.

Indeed, Pezeshkian has some formidable economic challenges ahead of him, ones he cannot afford to mishandle as the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tries to sustain itself as periodic anti-government protests get bigger and more frequent.

Hardliners have created a climate that has made Iran both a tough place to live and impossible to invest in, and Pezeshkian has so far failed to bring about any change, said Laylaz.

The latest manifestation of the country’s increasingly autocratic and suppressive policies came last week. The head of Iran’s judiciary declared that a new bill cracking down on women’s rights and their freedom of dress would be implemented regardless of how much opposition it’s provoked, including from conservative clerics.

The “Chastity and Hijab” law was conceived under the previous government of Ebrahim Raisi in response to a national uprising triggered by the death in custody of a young woman who had been arrested by Iran’s “morality police.”

Doubling down on these policies is only likely to raise the risk of another major public backlash, according to the Middle East experts.

The economy, dragged down by mismanagement and corruption, is buckling under US sanctions. Inflation is hovering above 30%, cutting average spending power by a third and now threatening an energy crisis as the country burns heavily polluting, cheaper fuel oil to prop up an aging power grid.

Iran can ill afford more civil unrest when Israel is likely to feel empowered by Trump’s return. Senior politicians in Iran are growing wary that Israel’s military offensive may now close in on Iran’s borders.

Israel says the rebels who have taken control of Syria are Islamists and have stepped up attacks on military sites, hitting airfields and weapons production sites, and sending troops deeper into its neighbor.

“It’s started with Gaza, then it entered Lebanon and in the past two weeks they’ve gone into Syria,” Mohsen Rezaee, a former vice president and veteran commander of the IRGC said on Tuesday. “They intend in the next months to attack Iraq and they dream of continuing their attacks on Iran.”

Israel and Iran traded direct missile strikes earlier this year as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government broadened its conflict in the Middle East following Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s wider goal is to completely upend Iran’s presence in the region and permanently alter its dynamics.

Those close to foreign policy circles in Iran’s government say, therefore, it’s not over for Iran’s regional ambitions. Far from feeling humbled or burned by what many Arab governments see as Iranian overreach, Tehran will just bide its time before molding a new approach.

“It’s clear for now that Iran is weighing up all the options that may arise from Assad’s ouster and will closely assess how the new leadership in Syria will take shape and look for a new policy in the region,” said Diako Hosseini, an academic in Tehran.

When Assad visited Tehran on May 30 following the sudden death of President Raisi, Supreme Leader Khamenei issued what was perhaps, in hindsight, a thinly veiled warning.

He praised the Syrian leader, telling him “everyone must witness the unique advantage of the Syrian government, which is its resistance,” according to a statement published on Khamenei’s official website at the time. But he also left Assad with a piece of advice.

“Your remarks contained important points,” Khamenei said. “But one point was more significant to me, which is what you emphasized and said, ‘whenever we retreat, the other side advances.’ There is no doubt about this — and this has been our slogan and belief for more than 40 years.”