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00:00Well, there have been winners and losers who have already emerged from the fall of Assad's
00:05regime.
00:06And the biggest loser of them all is arguably Iran, one of the ousted president's main allies.
00:13The victory by the rebels in Syria has dealt a serious blow to a central pillar of Tehran's
00:19foreign policy, and that's its axis of resistance, which Iran has built over decades.
00:24As a network of groups across the Middle East, among them Hezbollah and Hamas, Syria had
00:30served as an important geographical link for Iran to move weapons and other supplies to
00:37its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
00:39And with Assad now out of the picture, Iran's influence in Syria could be seriously curtailed.
00:44Well, let's speak more on this and speak to Roozbeh Farsi, who is head of the MENA program
00:49at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.
00:52Thanks so much for joining us on the program, Roozbeh.
00:55So I think we can all agree that it's been a very bad year for Tehran's axis of resistance.
01:01Where has it all gone wrong for Iran?
01:03Well, obviously, the primary reason is that the confrontation with Israel was something
01:09that Tehran did not expect to escalate to this degree.
01:13And they were also probably banking on the Americans not wanting this to get out of hand
01:17and that they would, in a sense, hold Israel back.
01:21The Biden administration did the opposite.
01:23And it turned out that Iran was much more risk averse and therefore more or less forced
01:29to back at every step.
01:32And that meant that both Israel could take several steps forward and the opposition groups
01:37in Syria found that the Syrian army and Bashar al-Assad did not have the support from Russia
01:44and Iran as it used to.
01:46And then came the collapse.
01:49I've had some analysts describing the events of October 7th as the main blame, reason to
01:56blame for this fall of Assad or the fall of the axis of resistance.
02:02Give us your thoughts on that.
02:05I think that's probably to take it a couple of steps too far, because it makes it sound
02:10as if everything was inevitable.
02:12There are obviously several things here along the way where people could have chosen differently
02:17and they didn't.
02:18So in that sense, 7th of October is a watershed for the region and arguably also for the international
02:23community if you look at it from a legal perspective.
02:26But it was not inevitable that this would lead to the fall down of Bashar al-Assad.
02:32But it was definitely one of the primary reasons why that in the end was what happened.
02:38And Roozbeh, let's talk about what's next now for the axis of resistance.
02:41Will Iran be looking to rebuild its strength there and with Hezbollah pretty much decimated,
02:47is there any hope for Iran's proxies?
02:50Well, I think it's important to remember that most of these groups have a raison d'etre.
02:55They have their own reason to exist that is independent of Iran.
03:00Hezbollah is integral to the Shia community of Lebanon.
03:04The Houthi rebels were rebels and Houthis long before Tehran entered the picture.
03:08So in that sense, you can say that they have their own reasons to exist.
03:12And when need be, they're going to show themselves to be much more autonomous of Iran than they
03:16have so far.
03:18But obviously, the fact that Iran cannot at the moment support them in the way that it
03:22used to, is going to put a lot of stress on the relationships.
03:27And I think Iran is now under pressure not only to show that it can support them, but
03:31also to show that it has deterrence left, that it still has an ability to act in the
03:37region.
03:38And I think this is one of the debates in Tehran right now.
03:40One of course, is how did this come about without us understanding that it was happening?
03:45How did we lose Syria?
03:47And then of course, what are we supposed to do now to regain some of our footing and see
03:52if we can salvage any of that enormous investment that was made into Bashar al-Assad's rule?
03:57Yeah, well, let's talk about what's next for Iran in Syria.
04:01Of course, as you mentioned, they pumped so much money into Assad and his rule there.
04:08Do you see Iran now taking the same tactics that it did in Afghanistan and Iraq, where
04:15it tried to support destabilising forces to counter US influence?
04:21What do you think is next for Iran in Syria?
04:24Well, the parallel doesn't really work here in the sense that at the moment, there is
04:29no overpowering actor that is trying to control all of Syria.
04:35If that had been the case, then the playing field would be much clearer.
04:39What we have are a number of armed actors that are Syrian and have achieved this victory.
04:45And they're all more or less related or sponsored by outside actors.
04:48Turkey, there's Israel on one side, there are American troops in Syria, there are the
04:53Kurds and so on and so forth.
04:55So that means that the picture is very, very complicated.
04:58And the fact that Iran is the loser today, and will probably remain the loser for the
05:02foreseeable future, it does not mean that we have that many winners on the other side.
05:06That can change within a week or a month or six months.
05:10So this is a very dynamic situation.
05:12And I don't think it's that easy to claim that now what will Iran do in order to spoil?
05:18There's yet nothing to spoil.
05:20But obviously, the Iranians will try and see if they can work up any kind of channels with
05:24the groups that at the moment are trying to control Syria to see if they can regain some
05:29of their influence.
05:30So that is going to be a very tall order, considering how closely associated they were
05:35with the very cruel dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.
05:39Rupsa, great to have you on the programme.
05:41Thanks so much for giving us your insight there.
05:43That's Rupsa Farsi, who is head of the MENA programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.