Assad's fall has Iran desperately searching for a new proxy

Syrian rebels forced President Bashar al-Assad to flee Syria for his life on Sunday. Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Assad asylum on humanitarian grounds. After 53 years of tyranny first begun by his father Hafez al-Assad, the end of the brutal Assad family regime in Syria had finally arrived.

Iran and Russia now find themselves on the outside of Damascus looking in. Both are facing the loss of significant bases of operations.

Russia has withdrawn some of its naval forces from Tartus, its strategic warm weather seaport of Tartus in the Eastern Mediterranean. Moscow has used the facility to project and logistically sustain Russian influence throughout the Middle East, the Sahel region of Africa, Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea.  

Likewise, the Russian air force is preparing to withdraw assets from Khmeimim Air Base in Syria – Moscow’s primary airfield, which has been used to strike Syrian rebels and civilians in population centers in support of the Assad regime for the last 13 years.

Iran’s loss is even greater. Syria was afforded a sanctuary where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could fund, supply, and train Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah proxies in Damascus, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank in their war against Israel. Now, that safe haven no longer exists.

It is now clear that Tehran and Moscow overplayed their hand in the Middle East on Oct. 7. Like many Arab nations before them intent on destroying the Jewish State, they underestimated Israel, and they now are paying the price. 

Cease-fires and peace deals suddenly ceased to be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's goal. Rather, he became fully motivated to remove the immediate threat of Hamas and Hezbollah as quickly as possible, as well as their enabler, Syria.

Next on the list is Iran — a fact of which the Mullahs are well aware. 

With a single twist of the regional kaleidoscope, change has swept across the Middle East. The fall of the Assad regime has become the latest of many second- and third-order effects of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. 

The fall of Syria is a significant loss for Tehran. Nor can they take consolation in the victory by the Sunni Islamist militant group that overthrew Assad, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. That group’s leader — presumptive interim leader of Syria Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — has stated, "We are open to friendship with everyone in the region, including Israel. We have no enemies except the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iran. What Israel did against Hezbollah in Lebanon helped us a lot."

Time will tell, however. Islamist rebels celebrating the fall of Damascus recently posted a video “promising that it’s just the start and that they will take Jerusalem next to free all the Gazans.” In the meantime, Israel continues to strike targets in Syria to “stop weapons [from] falling into the hands of extremists" and has now occupied all of strategically geolocated Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights. 

Iran does not have a force-projection military. It relies upon proxies, drones, and ballistic missiles. However, after two unsuccessful direct attacks against Israel in April and October, and given that its air defense network has been shattered by surgical Israeli strikes, Iran is now exposed and vulnerable.  

For the sake of its survival, Iran's regime is accelerating its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. And although the Biden Administration continues its attempt to restrain Israel from striking Iranian nuclear facilities, the Israelis did just that on October 26 when they destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, Iran. 

According to Axios, the strike “destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the explosives that could surround uranium in a nuclear device, significantly damaging Iran’s efforts to resume its nuclear weapons research.”

Iran also has reason to fear January 20, when President-elect Donald Trump, an unequivocal supporter of Israel, takes office in Washington. The Islamic Republic of Iran plotted to kill Trump prior to the election and still poses a threat to Middle East security.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen represent the only remaining Iranian proxy capable of striking Israel, disrupting commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and presenting a threat to the U.S. in the region.

In November, they targeted two U.S. Navy destroyers as they were traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait with eight drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles, and three anti-ship cruise missiles. The attacks were not successful.

On Dec. 1, the Houthis launched a Palestine 2 hypersonic missile toward Israel. Jerusalem has responded to previous Houthi attacks, in July and September, by targeting facilities in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah that it claimed “were being used to import munitions from Iran, military supplies and oil.”

Iran is in desperate need of a new proxy — one that provides it with some leverage to threaten U.S. interests in the region. They may have found that proxy in al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based terrorist group. An officially recognized affiliate of al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab adheres to “al-Qaeda’s global anti-Western jihadist narrative and promotion of sectarian violence in the Horn of Africa against those who do not agree with its extreme religious interpretation.” 

The connective tissue would be Yemen, but the situation is complicated.

The Houthis are Zaydi Shiites; al-Shabaab is a Sunni Islamic terrorist group that traditionally is ideologically opposed to Shiism. But they have a common enemy — the U.S. and Israel — and that has the makings for strange bedfellows. 

Weapons provided to al-Shabaab present a threat to the Somali government, U.S. forces and commercial shipping passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden from the shores of East Africa.

In June, U.S. intelligence learned of discussions by the Houthis to provide weapons to al-Shabaab, in what American officials described as a worrying development that threatens to further destabilize the Horn of Africa. It is believed Houthi rebels established a weapons agreement with al-Shabaab, and that likely did not happen without Iran's approval.

For al-Shabaab, it would provide access to a new source of weapons — including drones and possibly ballistic missiles — that are far more sophisticated than their current arsenal.

That concerns Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, who met with high-level Iranian officials while in Baghdad in July in an attempt to persuade the Houthis, through their Iranian backers, not to support al-Shabaab over the Somali government.

The Somali government is at risk, and so too are 480 U.S. Soldiers stationed there, and the 4,000 assigned to the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa Headquarters in neighboring Djibouti.

Al-Shabaab would be a dangerous and capable proxy for Iran in the Horn of Africa. In addition to confronting Khamenei’s nuclear weapons program, the incoming Trump administration must maintain maximum pressure and situational awareness against Tehran’s machinations in the Horn of Africa.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.