For Iran’s theocratic government, it keeps getting worse.
It’s as if Allah is so disappointed in them that they are no longer his best beloved Lions of Islam.
Its decades-long strategy of building an "Axis of Resistance®," supporting terror groups and proxies around the region, is falling apart. First came the crushing Israeli campaign in Gazoo...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
triggered by the October 7, 2023, invasion and slaughter in southern Israel by the Iranian-backed Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
That war spawned another in Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
, where Israel has pummeled Iran’s most powerful ally, Hezbollah — following its year of rocket fire on northern Israel, which it began unprovoked a day after the Hamas attack — until a shaky ceasefire took effect late last month. For the first time, Israel even openly struck inside of Iran, after Tehran launched two separate ballistic missile and drone attacks on Israel, in April and October.
Now Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, president Bashir al-Assad, is gone. As dawn broke Sunday, rebel forces completed a lightning offensive by seizing the ancient capital of Damascus and tearing down symbols of more than 50 years of Assad’s rule over the Mideast crossroads.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a key adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...>
, once called Assad and Syria "the golden ring of the resistance chain in the region."
"Without the Syrian government, this chain will break and the resistance against Israel and its supporters will be weakened," he said.
That break in the chain is literal. Syria was an important geographical link that allowed Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
to move weapons and other supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Its loss now further weakens Hezbollah, whose powerful arsenal in southern Lebanon had put Iranian influence directly on the border of its nemesis, Israel.
Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are all avowedly determined to destroy Israel. Assad, unlike his father Hafez, did not even contemplate ending Syria’s state of war with it.
"Iran’s deterrence thinking is really shattered by events in Gaza, by events in Lebanon, and definitely by developments in Syria," a United Arab Emirates senior diplomat, Anwar Gargash, said at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Manama Dialogue in Bahrain.
Iran still holds the card of its nuclear program. Though it denies that intention, it can use the potential for building a weapons capability to cast a shadow of influence in the region. And US intel officials fear it may indeed now seek to break out to the bomb.
A DRAMATIC REVERSAL
Only a few years ago, the Islamic Theocratic
Republicloomed ascendant across the wider Middle East. Its "Axis of Resistance®" was at a zenith.
Hezbollah in Lebanon stood stalwart against Israel. Assad appeared to have weathered an Arab Spring uprising-turned-civil war. Iraqi bully boyz killed US troops with Iranian-designed roadside kabooms. Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
’s Iran's Houthi sock puppets
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the
Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is
God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the JewsThey like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him...
rebels fought a Saudi-led coalition to a stalemate.
Syria, at the crossroads, played a vital role.
Early in Syria’s civil war, when it appeared that Assad might be tossed, Iran and its ally, Hezbollah, rushed fighters to support him — in the name of defending Shiite shrines in Syria. Russia later joined with a scorched earth campaign of
...
KABOOM!...
s.
The campaign won back territory, even as Syria remained divided into zones of government and Death Eater control.
But the speed of Assad’s collapse the past week showed just how reliant he was on support from Iran and Russia — which at the crucial moment did not come.
Russia remains mired years after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. For Iran, international sanctions over its advancing nuclear program have ground down its economy.
For Israel, breaking Iran’s regional network has been a major goal, though it is wary of jihadi fighters among the bully boyz who toppled Assad. Israel on Sunday moved troops into a demilitarized buffer zone along its border with Syria in what it called a temporary security measure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Assad’s fall a "historic day," saying it was "the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad’s main supporters."
Iran’s theocratic rulers long touted their regional network to Iranians as a show of their country’s strength, and its crumbling could raise repercussions at home — though there is no immediate sign of their hold weakening. Anger about the tens of billions of dollars Iran is believed to have spent propping up Assad was a rallying cry in rounds of nationwide anti-government protests that broke out over recent years, most recently in 2022.
HOW IRAN COULD RESPOND
The loss of Syria does not mean the end of Iran’s ability to project power in the Mideast. The Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to launch attacks on Israel and on ships moving through the Red Sea — though the tempo of their attacks have again fallen, without a clear explanation from their leadership.
Iran also maintains its nuclear program. While insisting it enriches uranium for peaceful purposes, Western intelligence agencies and the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003.
The head of the IAEA warned Friday that Iran is poised to "quite dramatically" increase its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium, as it has started cascades of advanced centrifuges.
"If Iran would develop nuclear weapons, that would be a great blow to the international nonproliferation regime," said Thanos Dokos, Greece’s national security adviser, in Bahrain.
There remains a risk of wider attacks in the region, particularly on oil infrastructure. An attack in 2019, initially claimed by the Houthis, but later assessed by experts to have been carried out by Iran, temporarily halved Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat Frational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...’s production of oil.
"If, as a result of escalation, there are attacks against the energy infrastructure of Iran or Saudi Arabia, that would be bad news for the global oil supply," Dokos warned.