Dousing Iran’s Ring of Fire

January 16, 2025

by: Ilse Strauss, News Bureau Chief

Thirteen years after the opening shots of the Syrian Civil War rang out on March 15, 2011, the devastating conflict came to an abrupt finale—against all odds and all in just over a week. Damascus fell to a coalition of rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on December 8, 2024, ending Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule and more than 50 years of Assad family dominance.

Few in Syria seemed to mourn the end of the Butcher of Damascus or his family’s legacy. Al Jazeera all but fondly described Assad senior, Hafez, as “a sociopath in a well-tailored suit” who slaughtered Syrians by the thousands, crushing any seed of opposition before it could sprout into resistance. When Assad junior took the helm in 2000, hopes were initially high that he would do better. Yet Assad junior one-upped his father on mass incarceration, torture, extra-judicial killings and atrocities against his own people. History will remember him as the dictator who governed Syria as a totalitarian police state and repressed peaceful protests against his regime, ultimately sparking a civil war in which half a million people were killed and six million became refugees. And then, when Assad saw the writing on the wall, he covertly fled to Moscow, leaving those who did his bidding to face the music.

I’m writing this article two weeks after HTS launched their lighting campaign to sweep like wildfire through the country, and one week after that same coalition marched almost unopposed into Damascus to receive a hero’s welcome. As Syrians rejoice, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has vowed to form a government “chosen by the people” to work toward establishing a stable and secure nation.

By the time you read this article, al-Golani is hopefully making good on his promises and Syria is emerging from the ruins of oppression and war. The Syrians certainly deserve that. Yet as the world wishes this war-weary nation the best, the mullahs in Iran are mourning Assad’s fall, the end of the civil war and the prospect of a stable Syria. The reason for the sour grapes? Israel, of course.

Meet the Axis of Resistance

Qassam Suleimani had a dream. The commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) envisioned a Middle East populated by Iranian terror armies and proxies—the so-called “Axis of Resistance”—positioned strategically along Israel’s borders to encircle the Jewish state in a ring of fire.

This ring of fire comprised Hezbollah in southern Lebanon; Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza; Hamas in Judea and Samaria or the so-called West Bank; and the Iran-beholden Assad-regime in Syria. This core group had the support of distant components: the Houthis in Yemen; and Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

Make no mistake, it was a brilliant strategy. By birthing, training, nurturing, funding and arming its own regional terror armies to do its dirty work, Iran would steer conveniently clear of the front lines. And perhaps more importantly, tiny Israel would be so occupied keeping the heavily armed militias on its doorstep at bay, Iran wouldn’t register on Israel’s radar, leaving the former free to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

Then came the Syrian Civil War, which Iran viewed as a golden opportunity. Tehran dispatched tens of thousands of elite IRGC troops to support Assad. Then, two years into the war, when the rebels were closing in on the Butcher of Damascus, Iran upped its backing, supplying security and intelligence services, training, technical support and combat troops. Iran also sicced Hezbollah on the Syrians in order to ensure that Assad remained in power—and in the mullah’s back pocket.

When Suleimani died in a US-targeted missile strike on January 3, 2020, his dream of a ring of fire was already well established. And in his wake, Suleimani’s successors made every effort to add the additional fuel to stoke the fire that they believed would ultimately consume the Jewish state.

Perhaps everything would have gone according to plan had it not been for October 7, 2023.

The Day the Fire Burned Bright

Former head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, proudly hailed Iran as its “largest backer financially and militarily.” Aerospace Force commander of Iran’s IRGC, Amir Ali Hajizadeh added, “All the missiles you might see in Gaza and Lebanon were created with Iran’s support.”

Having Iran in its corner emboldened Hamas. In fact, when thousands of Gazans smashed through the Israeli border on October 7, 2023, Hamas leadership fully believed that big brother Iran—and certainly fellow Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah—would rush to its aid, like Tehran did for Assad. His assumption proved a fatal miscalculation—for his people and for Iran.

As the daze of smoke and shock hung over a battered Israel on October 8, 2023, it seemed—for a moment—as if Suleimani’s ring of fire had ignited to consume the Jewish state. This was the high-point for Iran and its Axis of Resistance. Top terror leaders publicly celebrated the slaughter, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailing the massacre as “a decisive blow to the Zionist regime,” putting Israel “on the path that will only end in its destruction. The Zionist regime is gradually melting before the eyes of the people of the world.”

Then Israel regrouped.

Quenching the Flames

Fourteen months later, Hamas, a critical puppet in Iran’s Axis of Resistance, lies in ruins, its infrastructure dismantled and leadership decimated. Fellow Axis of Resistance member Hezbollah, Iran’s other prominent proxy, has faced severe setbacks, with virtually its entire top command structure eliminated. Israel killed thousands of its fighters and destroyed most of its rockets. Iran felt the blows acutely. But then the third and final key member of the Axis of Resistance toppled. And as the Assad regime fell, it doused the final flame in Iran’s ring of fire around the Jewish state, undoing decades of effort, billions in investment, and countless lives lost.

Israel didn’t have a hand in the developments in Syria, but its crippling blows dismantling Iran’s Axis of Resistance and quenching the ring of fire have been undeniable—even to Iranians.

Iranian political commentator Bardia Garshasbi took to X to praise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offering a blunt assessment of what many in the Middle East and beyond have observed: “…in just 14 months, [he] has overturned a 45-year, multibillion-dollar scheme of madness and [extremist ideology]…”

Israel is not claiming victory just yet. Underestimating the mullahs could be a fatal mistake. A cornered Iran—bereft of its proxies but fueled by the goal of annihilating Israel and chasing its nuclear ambitions to do so—may pose an even greater threat. History shows that a cornered foe can be dangerously unpredictable.

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