Afshon Ostovar
Ayear of sustained losses has left Iran’s grand strategy in ruins. The near destruction of Hamas in Gaza, the evisceration of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria deprived Iran of the proxies it had long relied on to threaten Israel. As a result, in June, Israel was able to conduct its 12-day war against Iran unencumbered by worries about regional escalation. That war demolished a long-held assumption about Iranian deterrence—the belief that Tehran could retaliate effectively against overt, direct attacks on its territory. More practically, it destroyed the country’s main air defenses, degraded its ballistic missile capabilities, and set back its nuclear ambitions.
Iran’s regime will certainly attempt to claw back its lost power. But regional developments since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s persistently assertive military footing have made it much harder for Tehran to take steps that could shore up its influence, such as rearming Hezbollah. Until Iran can defend its own territory, it may be impossible for it to rebuild its proxies or sprint for a nuclear bomb in a way that does not put the theocratic regime at further risk of collapse.
In the near term, Iran is likeliest to try to rebuild its military defenses by expanding its partnership with China. Until recently, Beijing has resisted backing one faction over another in the Middle East. But China’s calculus could be changing, too. It may well see fresh opportunities in assisting Iran to regain some of its diminished strength, given the rising tensions between Israel and Arab states—especially following Israel’s early September strikes on Hamas’s leadership in Qatar.
OBSTACLE COURSE
The Assad regime’s ouster last December—and the anti-Iranian stance adopted by Damascus’s new rulers—constitutes an underappreciated obstacle to Tehran’s ability to reconstruct its regional proxy strategy. For decades, Syria directly provided rockets and missiles to Hezbollah, the crown jewel of Iran’s proxy network; Assad also allowed Iran to smuggle weapons to Lebanon through Syrian territory. Although that effort met resistance after the outbreak of Syria’s civil war as Israel began to regularly conduct strikes on weapons storehouses in Syria and on convoys facilitated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran still managed to keep Hezbollah armed.
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