Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Reddit Email Print
Two-minute read
The joyous scenes of Syrians celebrating newfound freedom after half a century of tyranny are a heartwarming contrast to the gruesome images emerging from Assad’s prisons. These horrors remind us of the depths to which one man’s ruthlessness can plunge a nation. While Bashar al-Assad’s fall reverberated globally, its shockwaves hit hardest not in Damascus but in Tehran.
From the outset of Syria’s peaceful protests, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, made a fateful choice: to stand by Assad at any cost. Even as Iran grappled with its own economic crises, it poured tens of billions of dollars into propping up the Syrian regime. Thousands of fighters from IRGC-backed militias like the Fatemiyoun, Zainabiyoun, and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, alongside Qassem Soleimani’s Quds Force, were deployed to fuel Assad’s campaign of mass murder and destruction.
Soleimani’s strategy of scorched-earth warfare devastated Syrian cities, turning them into graveyards of rubble. Roofs once meant to shelter families became instruments of their death.
Iran’s regime prioritized Assad’s survival over its own pressing needs. Mehdi Taeb, commander of the Ammar HQ, infamously declared in 2013, “If forced to choose between Syria and Khuzestan, we’ll choose Syria.” Taeb’s boast of a 60,000-strong militia in Syria exemplified the regime’s miscalculated arrogance. Yet, after 13 years, a rebel force of 10,000 defeated Assad’s 170,000-strong army—a devastating blow to the regime’s regional ambitions, made possible by the collapse of the proxy forces that once safeguarded Assad’s rule.
Leaked document exposes #Iranian regime's financial support for #Syria. What are the implications of Billions of dollars squandered to prop up #Assad's regime?https://t.co/z4Ol9DSoHd
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 11, 2023
The aftermath is a nightmare for Tehran. Iran has lost its crucial corridor to Hezbollah, a linchpin of its regional influence, and squandered decades of investment. The fall of Assad shatters Khamenei’s vision of “strategic depth” and exposes the regime’s propaganda about regional power as hollow. The grand narrative of fighting foreign enemies “in Syria to avoid fighting them in Iran” has unraveled. Now, the regime faces the specter of a Syrian-inspired uprising on its own soil.
The Iranian media’s response has been a litany of despair and finger-pointing:
Watch and judge why Iranian state officials are trying to scare off the people and warn that #Iran will become like #Syria if #IranProtests2022 prolong pic.twitter.com/K4jkiMpBaw
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 26, 2022
The regime’s silence in the face of these critiques is deafening. Even state-linked commentators have broken ranks. Journalist Yashar Soltani posted, “Assad is finished. Dictators always fall suddenly.” Others have highlighted Assad’s 95% “election victories” as proof of the emptiness of such regimes. Davoud Hashemati, another state-aligned reporter, lamented, “Assad fell without a single civilian willing to defend him. What does that say about his so-called legitimacy?”
The lessons of Assad’s collapse are clear: no regime can survive on brutality alone. As the Prophet Muhammad’s saying goes, “A kingdom can endure disbelief, but not injustice.” The oppression, corruption, and silencing of dissent that defined Assad’s Syria are the same hallmarks of Tehran’s rule.
For Iran’s regime, the fall of Assad is not just a geopolitical defeat—it is a mirror reflecting its own vulnerabilities. The house of cards built on oppression, propaganda, and reckless ambition is crumbling. The question is not whether Tehran will face its reckoning, but when.