Iran is still grappling with the fallout from the fall of the Assad regime. It invested heavily in Assad’s rule in Damascus and likely expected that it would continue for many years. However, Assad fell from power on December 8.

Israel is celebrating the fall of Assad because it breaks the noose that Iran had been patiently tightening around Israel’s borders in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Tehran’s pincer is now broken and rendered useless. From the point of view of Israel’s wider conflict with the Islamic Republic, the collapse of Assad’s regime is a strategic victory.

The ascendance of Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria should be viewed with great caution by Western powers, but the Assad regime’s collapse disables a critical node in Iran’s regional proxy network, a counterterrorism expert explains.

For Iran’s theocratic government, it keeps getting worse. Its decadeslong strategy of building an “Axis of Resistance” supporting militant groups and proxies around the region is falling apart.

Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday that Israel and the United States were "completely wrong" to imagine the Tehran-backed axis of resistance had collapsed with the ouster of Syria's longtime strongman.