During the second half of this year, the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” suffered major blows. Today this Tehran-backed coalition of state and non-state actors is significantly weaker than it was months ago. The severe damage done to Hezbollah’s arsenal and image, as well as the Syrian regime’s fall, which ended a four-decade alliance between Damascus and Tehran, have greatly undermined the Islamic Republic’s position in the region. Probably for years, Iran’s foreign policy will reflect this new reality.

Nonetheless, although the “Axis of Resistance” is badly weakened, it is inaccurate to claim that it is “dead”. The coalition still has powerful actors within it, such as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in Iraq and Ansar Allah, commonly referred to as the Houthis, in Yemen. Perhaps most importantly, however, is the fact that the resistance ideology remains alive. Looking ahead, as long as the US and Israel’s foreign policies give people in the region reason to resist there will be significant segments of these societies which support the principles, values, and vision of the “Axis of Resistance.”

Iran Faces a “New Syria”

Scenes out of Damascus earlier this month sent a powerful message to Tehran about what will likely be the new Syrian political order. The ransacking of the Iranian embassy, where posters of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were trampled on and pictures of the late Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah were torn up, illustrate the anti-Iranian sentiments of the forces which ended 63 years of Ba’athist rule in Syria on December 8 in a lightning rebel offensive led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Adding insult to injury is the fact that invading Israeli forces came within 25 kilometers of the Syrian capital shortly after Assad’s ouster.

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When asked about how much of a setback the Syrian regime’s fall is to Tehran’s foreign policy interests, Dr. Rouzbeh Parsi, head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, noted the massive political, financial, and military capital which Iran had invested in its relationship with Assad’s government since 2011. From Tehran’s perspective, the Assad government’s collapse was the “equivalent of what Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan [were] to the US,” he told Maghrebi.

“Most likely they tried to prod [Assad] to invest in some kind of society rebuilding but he seems to have not been particularly interested. And so, it all crumbled—it might have done that eventually anyway, but with everything else happening in the region in the past year, his demise came sooner rather than later. Tehran will now, ironically, do what Washington tried in 1979, in short attempt to build bridges to a revolutionary government that detests you because of your close ties you had to their tormentors,” explained Dr. Parsi.

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The Assad government’s fall must lead to “serious soul searching” among Iranian officials because it “occurred on their turf and because it amply illustrated that the regional strategy pursued by the Mullahs was not sound,” Dr. Joseph A. Kéchichian, a senior fellow at the King Faisal Centre in Riyadh, told Maghrebi.

With the HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (a.k.a. Abu Mohammed al-Golani), who is now Syria’s de facto leader, publicly declaring how much he loathes Iran and Hezbollah, Tehran will probably lack a significant role in post-Assad Syria.

“Al-Sharaa seems to have vastly different priorities, namely the establishment of a publicly mandated government (with Sunni preferences) along with a planned reconstruction that, presumably, will emphasize national unity over conflicts with its neighbors. Consequently, Iran will now be on the sidelines, as hardliners and reformists duke it out on what it is they are doing wrong, though—mercifully—their strategic arena will no longer be the Arab world. Of course, Tehran will try to navigate the post-Assad era with unhindered ambitions, but much will depend on the responses that HTS leaders will give them that, at least for the foreseeable future, will reject Tehran’s past ‘Balkanization of Syria,’” added Dr. Kéchichian.

Hezbollah’s Future in the Post-Assad Era

By the time of Assad’s fall, there was much bitterness within Lebanon’s Hezbollah about Damascus’ non-confrontational approach toward Israel between September and November, when Tel Aviv was pounding Beirut with missiles and decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership.

Given the history of Hezbollah making huge sacrifices to shore up the Syrian government beginning with the 2013 Battle of Qusayr, some in the Lebanese group were upset with this lack of action from Damascus while Israel’s military was destroying parts of Lebanon and delivering major blows to Hezbollah, according to Dr. Karim Emile Bitar, professor of International Relations at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut.

“I think one of the great lessons of the past few months, what was particularly significant, is that Bashar al-Assad was completely silent. He did not even do the ‘service minimum’. He did not do his minimum duty toward Hezbollah, particularly after Hezbollah lost over 5,000 fighters in order to save ‘Private Bashar’…before Russia intervened in 2015,” he told this author shortly before Assad fled to Moscow.

Nonetheless, even when Syria was not doing as much as firing one bullet at Israel since October 7, 2023, the country was serving as a crucial highway for arms to transit from Iran to Lebanon. Now that the Assad regime has fallen, Hezbollah must face new challenges in this upcoming period. Fears of this exact scenario were what motivated the group to become so involved in the Syrian crisis in the 2010s.

“Iran could indeed rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon, but this will be logistically difficult, akin to climbing Mount Everest wearing swimsuits. Although nothing is impossible, a resurrection of Hezbollah as a militia will be a very, very, long-term proposition, one that will also depend on what happens in Syria over the course of the next few years,” said Dr. Kéchichian.

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“Iran’s transfer of weapons to Hezbollah is likely to continue but it will be much more expensive as there will be many more obstacles to overcome,” explained Dr. Marina Calculli, a research fellow at Columbia University, in an interview with Maghrebi.

Dr. Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, believes that to “some degree” the Iranians will be able to continue sending logistical supplies and weapons to Hezbollah even if the new Damascus government is not a partner of Tehran or the Lebanese organization.

“There’s very poor governance across areas of Syria, particularly as you have the ongoing [Syrian Democratic Forces] and [Islamic State] conflicts with HTS. That poor governance allows not only for drug smuggling and some Captagon trade to survive, even though it seems that the rebels are cracking down on it, they likely haven’t extinguished those networks—they won’t be able to extinguish those networks overnight. It also allows for trucks, arms convoys, and depots to move across borders in unpredictable ways,” he told Maghrebi.

Pointing to Iran-aligned Iraqi militias, Dr. Ramani suggested that these actors could play an effective role in overland transit via Syrian territory. He also noted that “if and when the Syrian reconstruction takes hold and we start seeing a normalization of land, sea, and air traffic, it’s very possible that civilian ships, channel fleets, and civilian aircraft could also be used as conduits for the movement of logistical supplies and arms toward Hezbollah.”

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Given Syria’s own internal problems and the potential for Israeli violations of Syria’s sovereignty to increase in the upcoming future, Dr. Ramani questions whether the HTS-led government will have either the capability or will to crack down on Iran’s transit of supplies and weapons to Lebanon “if it does turn out that the Israelis’ land grab in the Golan Heights is something deeper and more long-term than the Israelis have framed it to be, and HTS’s early talk about de-escalation with Israel starts to wear thing,” he commented.

Weakened, yet Still Alive

The leadership in Tehran now wraps up 2024 licking its wounds. Israel’s military campaigns have unquestionably dealt significant blows to the “Axis of Resistance” that Iran has spent decades shoring up. In 2025, Iranian officials will have to make important decisions about how to move forward in terms of reconstituting this weakened coalition of Tehran-aligned actors.

“The coming year will be a year for mourning, as the ‘Axis of Resistance’ will bury its dead, commemorate its martyrs, and prepare a new cadre of leaders who may, perhaps, draw lessons from their defeat,” Dr. Kéchichian told Maghrebi.

Yet, beyond the fact that Iraq’s PMU and Yemen’s Ansar Allah remain powerful forces which resist Israel and US hegemony, it is important to observe that Israel did not achieve a decisive all-out victory over its Lebanese enemy. “Hezbollah in Lebanon is still standing,” noted Dr. Calculli. “This also points to the limits of Israel’s immense power, as Israel started the offensive against Lebanon in September 2024, announcing the start of a ‘post-Hezbollah era’, which has not materialized,” she added.

Stressing that the ideology of the “Axis of Resistance” is still “alive and kicking”, it is important to recognize the “real driving force of the alliance and what continues to attract people from the region and even beyond,” explained Dr. Calculli.

“Even those who criticize Iran, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah for their domestic repressive policies, recognize their role in defending a vision of the Middle East as capable of enjoying dignity, autonomy from external domination, and exerting their right to self-determination,” she told Maghrebi.

“This is a vision that stands in total opposition to the US-Israeli vision of the region as completely subjugated to their supremacy. US-backed Israeli colonial expansionism in the Middle East, now threatening Syria and even Jordan, after Israel took control of the Yarmouk riverbed and the al-Wahda Dam, is likely to reignite popular support for the resistance,” added Dr. Calculli.

Dr. Ghoncheh Tazmini, author of Power Couple: Russian-Iranian Alignment in the Middle East (2023), similarly pointed to the important ideological factors that are critical to the Islamic Republic’s influence in the Middle East. “The Iranian regime views Western militarism, its unconditional support for Israel, and regime change efforts as existential threats. Hence, it uses its expeditionary security policy to extend its defensive perimeter. Furthermore, Tehran combines hard power (its drone tech, military support for allied forces) with soft power (cultural, ideological, and diplomatic influence) to sustain its regional strategy,” she told Maghrebi.

 “In relation to Iran’s loss of influence due to the blow on the axis of resistance, Iran’s hard power may have been eroded, but soft power remains a constant in the region, and that is what has sustained Iranian influence. Iran has long embedded itself in the region and projected influence with soft power resources through non-coercive means by using an array of instruments to build lasting partnerships throughout the region. In the long-run, Iran can always regroup and rebuild on this foundation,” added Dr. Tazmini.

This Tehran-led coalition is “weakened and it will need to reevaluate its political, strategic and tactical approaches,” explained Dr. Parsi. “But in and of themselves each group has an environment that they are organically part of—irrespective of the relationship [with] Tehran. So, from a military and strategic point of view the constituent elements still exist. To what extent they want to and can coordinate on various issues remains to be seen,” he concluded.

Ultimately, assertions that the “Axis of Resistance” is dead are premature. Just as Israel dealt a severe and humiliating blow to Egypt’s military in 1967, by 1973 the large Arab country had impressively rebuilt its army in record time. There is no reason to assume that Iran and the Tehran-led “Axis of Resistance” can’t do something similar in the future.

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Washington, DC. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, and an Adjunct Fellow at the American Security Project.