This is a disaster for Iran and the ayatollahs have never been more vulnerable. The smell of regime change is now in the Tehran air.
THE biggest losers, by far, from the collapse of the Syrian dictatorship yesterday – other than the brutal Assad family and its thuggish acolytes – are the ruling mullahs of Iran.
Their dreams of Middle East hegemony are now in ruins, their genocidal aim of wiping Israel off the map now mission impossible, their ability to supply their murderous proxies across the region with weapons and boots on the ground now crippled.
There are, of course, other losers. Brutal Russian military might, along with Iranian proxy forces, saved Bashar al-Assad’s skin when civil war engulfed the country after the 2011 Arab Spring.
Now, in a humiliating loss of face, President Putin has – in effect – had to admit that Russia has suffered so many losses of men and materiel in Ukraine that it is incapable of sustaining combat on two fronts.
Indeed, far from rushing to Assad’s aid again, Moscow had been withdrawing much of its military personnel and equipment from Syria to bolster its Ukraine-based forces, and in the process hung Assad out to dry.
Russia will still try to keep its Syrian naval and air bases, which
It has upended the geopolitics of the Middle East
allow it to project power in the eastern Mediterranean. But the Kremlin has lost an important client state which enhanced its influence in the region.
The Chinese are losers, too. Syria joined its Belt and Road Initiative, designed to spread Chinese power and influence across the globe, in 2022. Beijing is in a joint venture with Syria’s national oil company. All this must now be in jeopardy.
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