Eliot A. Cohen: “When Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel on October 7, 2023, he intended to deal a decisive blow against a powerful nation-state—and he succeeded. But the state his attack has devastated turned out not to be Israel, but Iran, his key sponsor.
“It is a persistent folly of progressive thought to believe that wars do not achieve meaningful political consequences. The past 15 months in the Middle East suggest otherwise. After suffering terribly on October 7, Israel has pulverized Hamas, ending the threat it posed as an organized military force. The challenge it now faces in Gaza is a humanitarian and administrative crisis, not a security one. Israel has likewise shattered Hezbollah in Lebanon, forcing it to accept a cease-fire after losing not only thousands of foot soldiers but much of its middle management and senior leadership. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s brutal but botched war of conquest in Ukraine has undermined his other strategic goals. In Syria, Russia’s one solid foothold in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has leached away Russian forces, depriving it of the ability to influence events.
“All of this set the stage for the dramatic events of the past two weeks, as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni fundamentalist militia, spearheaded the seizure of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus and brought about the overthrow and collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Neither Tehran nor Moscow could do anything about it.
“The biggest loser in all of this—after Assad, his family, his cronies, and possibly his Alawite sect—is Iran. Decades of patient work assembling proxy movements throughout the Middle East, specifically but not exclusively focused on Israel, have collapsed. Hamas was never a cat’s paw of Tehran, but it received weapons and training from Iran, and coordinated with Hezbollah, a far more formidable force, and one much more tightly aligned with, if not always entirely controlled by, Iran. Hezbollah had helped turn the tide of battle that had flowed against the Assad regime from 2012 onwards. It kept a force of 5,000 to 10,000 men in Syria at the height of its commitment, but they were not alone. Iran organized and trained thousands more in dozens of militias, including a Syrian Hezbollah, and various Shiite groups from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. All of them are now on the run …”
“All of this presents an amazing, and amazingly complicated, set of political circumstances. But even as the fog of war hangs over Syria’s shattered cities … some things are clear.
“The first is that deeply unpopular authoritarian regimes tend to be far more fragile than they look. Few saw the sudden collapse of the Assad regime coming. Other authoritarian states, including Iran itself, may now become more tractable in dealing with foreign powers, and more paranoid internally.
“The ubiquity of surprise in war is a lesson learned and relearned every few years, as is the centrality of the intangibles—organization, planning, the will to fight, leadership—in assessing military power.”
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Eliot A. Cohen: “When Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel on October 7, 2023, he intended to deal a decisive blow against a powerful nation-state—and he succeeded. But the state his attack has devastated turned out not to be Israel, but Iran, his key sponsor.
“It is a persistent folly of progressive thought to believe that wars do not achieve meaningful political consequences. The past 15 months in the Middle East suggest otherwise. After suffering terribly on October 7, Israel has pulverized Hamas, ending the threat it posed as an organized military force. The challenge it now faces in Gaza is a humanitarian and administrative crisis, not a security one. Israel has likewise shattered Hezbollah in Lebanon, forcing it to accept a cease-fire after losing not only thousands of foot soldiers but much of its middle management and senior leadership. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s brutal but botched war of conquest in Ukraine has undermined his other strategic goals. In Syria, Russia’s one solid foothold in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has leached away Russian forces, depriving it of the ability to influence events.
“All of this set the stage for the dramatic events of the past two weeks, as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni fundamentalist militia, spearheaded the seizure of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus and brought about the overthrow and collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Neither Tehran nor Moscow could do anything about it.
“The biggest loser in all of this—after Assad, his family, his cronies, and possibly his Alawite sect—is Iran. Decades of patient work assembling proxy movements throughout the Middle East, specifically but not exclusively focused on Israel, have collapsed. Hamas was never a cat’s paw of Tehran, but it received weapons and training from Iran, and coordinated with Hezbollah, a far more formidable force, and one much more tightly aligned with, if not always entirely controlled by, Iran. Hezbollah had helped turn the tide of battle that had flowed against the Assad regime from 2012 onwards. It kept a force of 5,000 to 10,000 men in Syria at the height of its commitment, but they were not alone. Iran organized and trained thousands more in dozens of militias, including a Syrian Hezbollah, and various Shiite groups from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. All of them are now on the run …”
“All of this presents an amazing, and amazingly complicated, set of political circumstances. But even as the fog of war hangs over Syria’s shattered cities … some things are clear.
“The first is that deeply unpopular authoritarian regimes tend to be far more fragile than they look. Few saw the sudden collapse of the Assad regime coming. Other authoritarian states, including Iran itself, may now become more tractable in dealing with foreign powers, and more paranoid internally.
“The ubiquity of surprise in war is a lesson learned and relearned every few years, as is the centrality of the intangibles—organization, planning, the will to fight, leadership—in assessing military power.”
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