- It’s been a rough year for Iran and its friends in the Middle East.
- Israel has degraded Tehran’s proxy forces and delivered punishing airstrikes against Iran itself.
- And Iran just lost one of its most important allies in the region: the Assad regime.
From Gaza to Beirut, Damascus to Tehran, it’s been a rough year for Iran and its allies and proxy forces across the Middle East.
Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah have severely degraded these two Iranian proxies, while its military confrontations with Iran itself have left the country short on critical defenses. Tehran’s key ally — Syria’s longtime dictator, Bashar Assad — was just ousted by rebel forces.
A senior Biden administration official said earlier this month that Assad’s fall can be traced to US support for Israel in its conflicts with Iran and its proxies and Ukraine in its defense against Russia.
“Hamas is on its back; its leaders are dead,” the US official told reporters. “Iran is on its back. Hezbollah is on its back. Russia is on its back. It’s just abandoned its only ally in the Middle East.”
“Now, the Assad regime — Russia and Iran’s main ally in the Middle East — has just collapsed,” they said.
The Iranian proxies
Hamas’ October 7, 2023, massacre, which killed around 1,200 people in Israel, sent shockwaves through the Middle East and triggered an immediate — and devastating — military response.
What began as an aerial bombardment later turned into an Israeli invasion of Gaza. After more than a year, Israel has eliminated Hamas’ military leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, in a scorched-earth campaign that local authorities in Gaza say has killed over 45,000 Palestinians and drawn international condemnation.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said after Sinwar’s killing that Israel has “decimated” the military structure of Hamas, although he acknowledged the group is still a threat in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Lebanese Hezbollah started attacking Israel shortly after October 7, and the two longtime enemies regularly exchanged cross-border fire for nearly a year, displacing tens of thousands of people as fighting steadily escalated.
In September, Israel sharply increased the pressure with its audacious pager attacks, followed by a new campaign of strikes that wiped out Hezbollah’s senior leadership and weaponry. Israeli forces then invaded Lebanon before a late-November cease-fire ended the fighting, which left thousands of people dead across the country.
Brian Carter, the Middle East portfolio manager at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, said earlier this month that the “Israeli operations in Lebanon have defeated Hezbollah and compelled the group to end its involvement in the October 7 War.”
Iran itself
In early April, an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus killed multiple senior Iranian military officials, escalating what had long been a shadow war between Israel and Tehran.
Iran responded later that month by launching over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, but nearly all the projectiles were shot down in what was the first-ever direct attack on Israel from Iranian soil. Israel then struck Iran in retaliation.
In July, Iran accused Israel of executing the daring assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’ political wing. Haniyeh was killed at a guesthouse in Tehran — a tremendous security breach and a blow to Iran.
Iran waited months to retaliate over the killing of Haniyeh and other proxy leaders, but on October 1, it launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel — the second direct confrontation between the two bitter foes. Officials said a majority of the Iranian missiles were intercepted.
Israel then responded later that month, carrying out widespread airstrikes that nearly wiped out all of Iran’s air-defense systems and degraded its ability to produce missiles. An Israeli security official told BI in the aftermath that the strikes were “powerful” and put Tehran at a “disadvantage,” as they left the country vulnerable to follow-on military action.
The Assad regime
Iran long supported the Assad regime because it viewed Damascus as a crucial pillar for keeping weapons flowing to Hezbollah and projecting its influence across the region to Lebanon along the Mediterranean Sea.
But earlier this month, Syria’s yearslong civil war ended in shocking fashion when rebel forces suddenly swept across the country in a lightning offensive that lasted just days and ended with their capture of Damascus. Assad and his family fled to Moscow.
US officials attributed the sudden collapse of the Assad regime to the fact that its main allies — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia — were much weaker than in years past and simply couldn’t intervene militarily as they had done earlier in the civil war.
President Joe Biden said after the rebels captured Damascus that the military setbacks Iran and Hezbollah have suffered fighting against Israel this year essentially made it “impossible” for them to continue to support the Assad regime.
The Houthis
One Iranian ally that has stood out among the others is the Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen that has spent over a year attacking civilian and military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Armed with a large, diverse stockpile of missiles and attack drones, the Houthis have launched more than 130 attacks on vessels transiting shipping lanes off the coast of Yemen. They have struck a number of merchant ships, sinking two of them and hijacking one. Four sailors have been killed during the campaign.
The Houthis have said their campaign is in support of Palestinians in Gaza, although US officials often dismiss this claim since the rebels have targeted vessels sailing under many different flags. These attacks have caused a significant decline in activity along a key global trade route, forcing shipping companies to make longer and more costly trips around Africa.
A Western naval coalition, led by the US Navy, has so far been unable to defeat or deter the Houthis. American forces routinely intercept inbound missiles and drones and carry out strikes against the rebels in Yemen.
Though degraded, the Houthis still retain the ability to attack ships. Just this month alone, the rebels have targeted US warships and commercial ships with missiles and drones on multiple occasions. The vessels all emerged unscathed after the attacks, but the incidents underscore the enduring threat that shows no signs of stopping.
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