Sunday marked the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the end of a half-century of rule by the Assad family and the culmination of the country’s nearly 14-year-long civil war. Assad fled Damascus on Saturday evening after a coalition of rebel groups seized the capital in a lightning offensive that began in late November. During a visit to the Syrian border on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Syrian government’s collapse a “direct result” of his own country’s efforts to weaken Iran and its proxies. Donald Trump took to Truth Social, adding Russia’s insecurity to the calculus: “Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success.” Both men are right.
Assad, deplored at home for the chemical weapon attacks and other repressive tactics he deployed against his own people during the civil war, found dictatorial bedfellows abroad. He aligned with Tehran, letting the regime use Syria as a smuggling route to transfer weapons to the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Russia established its only Mediterranean naval and air bases along Syria’s coast, providing critical air support to the Assad regime’s successful campaign against insurgents a decade ago.
Though Moscow has reportedly granted Assad asylum, neither Russia’s forces in the region nor Tehran’s or its allied militias stepped up to defend the Syrian regime from the rebel advance over the past few weeks. This is due in large part to their own priorities and entanglements in regional conflicts — Russia with Ukraine and Iran with Israel — both directly and indirectly through its proxies.
Russia and Iran’s weaknesses are no thanks to the Biden administration. Mr. Biden has given Ukraine just enough firepower to fend off defeat but not enough to deliver a decisive blow. Even when critical weapons are transferred, restrictions are never far behind. Mr. Biden placed geographic targeting constraints on the use of long-range ATACM missiles fired into Russian territory, a decision he only reversed recently. Again, too little too late.
Meanwhile, if President Biden had his way, Israel would have left Hamas’s leadership and infrastructure intact while preventing the decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership and the destruction of its precision-guided missile reserves. The President explicitly instructed Israel not to clear out Rafah’s civilian population, alleging that Hamas was so weak that it was “no longer capable” of perpetrating another October 7th attack. But what about in six months? Or a year? Israel doesn’t have the luxury of waiting to see what happens.
The only way to ensure that the Iranian proxy did not reconstitute itself was to do exactly what Israel did: ignore Biden’s advice and take hold of the city. Israel approached Hezbollah the same way. After ceaseless rocket barrages for over a year that depopulated Israel’s northern towns and skirmishes on the Israel-Lebanon border, the IDF entered Southern Lebanon. They discovered a vast network of tunnels strategically placed alongside the border poised to stage another October 7-style attack.
Biden’s cautious and conciliatory approach to Tehran and its proxies reveals that he and his administration fail to comprehend the scale of the threat to Israel’s security, and that of the West more generally. After Sunday, a new power vacuum must be added to the calculus. Western nations, and the U.S. in particular, will have to prepare for what comes next. Given the al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliations of the victorious Islamists toppling Assad, prospects for freedom and prosperity in the region seem remote. The incoming U.S. administration should learn from its predecessor’s foreign policy bungles and ensure that a new dark era of Islamism does not descend upon Syria, further destabilizing the Middle East and providing Iran with opportunities to rebound.
Image Credit: Omar Albam
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