Iran’s Defeat in Syria Signals New Middle East Hierarchy
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia rather than Iran for his first official trip abroad represents a seismic shift in the Middle East’s geopolitical balance of power. Al-Sharaa’s meetings in Riyadh signal that Damascus intends to replace Iran as its main regional ally and cultivate closer relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states. This change constitutes a major strategic defeat for Iran, which for decades has relied on Syria as a land bridge to supply its Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah to attack Israel.
Al-Sharaa led the Syrian opposition in overthrowing the regime of longtime President Bashar al-Assad, who relied on Russia and Iran to help him maintain his grip on power. With Russia militarily bogged down in Ukraine, and Iran and its proxies severely debilitated by Israel, Assad’s enfeebled allies could not defend his failing regime against Islamist insurgents. He fled the country for Moscow in December 2024.
Saudi Arabia supported anti-Assad insurgent groups after the Syrian Civil War began in March 2011. Riyadh sought to rein in the Shia Crescent—an arc of expanding Iranian influence stretching from the Persian Gulf through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon—which threatened to exacerbate the centuries-old rivalry between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia now hopes to keep Iran permanently out of Syria.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has promised to lift crippling international sanctions imposed on Syria during Assad’s rule. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, pledged investments to help reconstruct Syria’s infrastructure. Rebuilding Syria after more than a decade of civil war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, money that Saudi Arabia can—but Iran cannot—supply.
Syria’s new leadership has frozen diplomatic ties with Iran, and Iranian citizens cannot enter the country without prior authorization. Al-Sharaa said that Iran poses a “strategic threat” not only to Syria, but to the entire Middle East. Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani warned Iran against “spreading chaos” in Syria and said Tehran “must respect the will of the Syrian people.”
The new geopolitical reality in Damascus is a game-changing setback for Iran. Syria was the linchpin of Tehran’s Axis of Resistance, a network of pro-Iran militias and governments that Iran leveraged to project power across the Middle East to oppose Israel and the United States. Ali Akbar Velayati, a key adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once described Syria as “the golden ring of the resistance chain in the region.”
Iran’s former top-ranking general in Syria, Brigadier General Behrouz Esbati, admitted that Iran suffered a major defeat in Syria. “I don’t consider losing Syria something to be proud of,” he said in a candid speech in Tehran. “We were defeated, and defeated very badly. We took a very big blow, and it’s been very difficult.”
Although Iran may be down, it is not out. “There is growing concern that a weakened and increasingly vulnerable Iran, governed by a survivalist regime, may see no alternative but to weaponize its decades-long nuclear program,” Middle East expert Arman Mahmoudian warned. “A fragile Iranian regime, desperate to survive, may become an even greater source of instability.”
