When the Pillars Fell

Iran has had a bad year.

Israel has decimated Hamas, the Iranian-backed Palestinian group that perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks last year, Times Radio said. Israel has also severely undermined Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group that attacked Israel in response to its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, explained McGill University international relations lecturer Daniel L. Douek in the Conversation. The recent fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad has eliminated Iran’s most important ally in the region, added NBC News.

These three groups were vital members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” that Iran was coordinating with Russia’s help against American and Israeli influence in the Middle East, reported the New York Times. “Rump militias in Iraq and the Houthi tribe of Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East,” are Iran’s only standing allies in the region, Time magazine added.

Added to that was the Israeli destruction of Syrian military infrastructure that followed the ousting of the Syrian regime. Hundreds of strikes destroyed warplanes, helicopters, weapons caches, and the bulk of the country’s navy, which had buffered Iran. Iran was already exposed after Israeli strikes in October hit the country’s most sensitive military sites. Meanwhile, an Israeli overt aerial campaign on Iranian assets in Syria since October 2023 has killed dozens of Iranian officers, the United Nations said. In April, Israel killed seven more Iranian officers in a strike close to Iran’s embassy in Damascus.

Lastly, Donald Trump’s US election victory has put a staunchly anti-Iran leader in the White House. As the American Enterprise Institute wrote, Trump has promised to apply “maximum pressure” on the mullahs in Tehran.

These diplomatic and strategic setbacks are occurring as the Iranian economy is reeling under the strain of sanctions and global inflation. Food prices, for example, are on track to increase 40 percent next year in the country, said Iran News Update. Iranian leaders, incidentally, spent as much as $35 billion on Syria between when the country’s civil war kicked off in 2011 and then slowed to a simmer, for example, noted Iran Focus. That money has now gone up in smoke.

Not all is bleak. Iran has improved ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, argued foreign policy expert James Durso in the Hill. Like Russia, Iran has also successfully bypassed sanctions to sell more oil on global markets to generate much-needed revenues.

Iranian leaders are also exploring whether or not they should risk creating a nuclear deterrent to stop Western leaders who might seek to disrupt the country internally.

“Science and technology are considered key factors in creating power and authority,” said Mohammad Eslami, who leads Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, in Iran Insight. “A country can maintain its independence and progress only if it pursues its development without reliance on others, especially the dominant global powers.”

The biggest challenges facing Iran are arguably internal, however.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 85 years old, the BBC reported. He and his political allies must choose a successor. This new leader must garner the support of hardline Muslim clerics and refrain from triggering protests among more liberal-minded Iranians.

That might be wishful thinking, however. A year after months of devastating protests broke out against the regime over the death of a young Kurdish woman in custody for violating the country’s strict dress codes for women, activists say they are energized by the fall of the Assad regime next door. Even though the Iranian regime had violently put down the protests and instituted even harsher controls on dissent since the protests, women continue to challenge the rules. And now, activists say they believe the disintegration of Iranian power abroad could force the loosening of authoritarian rule at home.

“The fingers of the Islamic Republic are being cut off and are getting weaker,” one activist from eastern Iran told the Washington Post. “The fall of Bashar Assad didn’t only raise the hopes of the opposition but also raised the spirits of the Iranian nation.”