Global power shift in real time — from Hamas’s own goal to Assad’s fall and Iran’s huge blunder

This is a difficult article to write, because it requires turning away from the ugly human cost of the endless conflicts in the Middle East. This includes the misery in Israel and Gaza, as well as in other places which did not make front page news while it was happening, like the decades-known existence of secret torture and execution prisons across Syria. In trying to get a handle on the momentous way in which the world order has been rewritten in the short space of a few months, one has to try to ignore the keening of grieving mothers and concentrate on the larger geopolitical narratives. That is hard to do.

Last week, after the sudden collapse of the house of Assad, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post on social media about how simple the Syrian situation was, intending to illustrate the opposite. But, after reading scores of analyses, some matters have indeed become clear.

The first and most blindingly obvious one is that the brutal Hamas-led incursion into Israel on 7 October 2023 kicked off a line of falling dominoes which has led to a near-complete collapse of the “Shia Crescent”, a term coined to describe Iran’s long-term strategy and financing of a plan to consolidate Iran-led Shia influence and control over a vast crescent-shaped region including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Bahrain.

It has all unravelled quickly, leaving Iran dangerously weakened (even tottering) and Israel promoted to its strongest position in decades. The Hamas incursion will go down as one of the greatest own goals in recent Middle Eastern history, leaving the prospect of a stable and prosperous independent Palestinian state more remote than ever.

To recap the events that have led us here:

When the Hamas incursion was planned and executed (arguably in collaboration with Iran, and widely believed to have been sparked by an imminent normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel), it was surely known by Hamas that retribution would be swift and hot. Perhaps Hamas calculated that innocent dead Palestinians (a certain consequence of any Israeli response; Hamas does not wear uniforms) could only help the Hamas cause globally. And it did, as evidenced by the worldwide outpouring of support for both the Palestinians and Hamas, including on American campuses.

Read more: Middle East crisis

Israel’s government and its military evidently had something other in mind than simply to pursue and punish Hamas (while also trying to extract hostages). Their strategy seems to have been based on the idea that there is little difference between Hamas and the Palestinians who voted them in and, in large part, support them. So the best route to ensuring that an incursion of this kind never, ever happens again is to completely destroy the entire infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, both as a punishment and warning.

Which they have done. And they were right; there is now little chance that such a Gaza-based incursion will happen again. But it has come at great cost, with many thousands of innocents dead, the bruising of Israel’s international reputation, and a truly shocking explosion of antiSemitism worldwide. From the Likud government’s perspective, the cost appears to be justified. By all military measures, Israel has won decisively. Less so politically. But politics is fickle and forgetful.

In any event, it might have ended there, with a crumpled Gaza slowly rebuilding and Hamas reduced to a ragtag and largely impotent shoot-and-run outfit. But Iran, in a startling strategic blunder (at least with hindsight), decided to let slip the dogs of war when they unmuzzled their regional militias. These included Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as some of their own rocket launchers. This was supposedly the “ring of fire” that Iran had long promised to use in order to incinerate the “Zionist entity”.

Not only did it not work, but the once-powerful Hezbollah has been completely decapitated, while Houthi and Iranian rocket attacks caused little damage and only invited immediate and punishing counterattacks from Israel, which laid bare their embarrassing lack of air defences. The long-sought destruction of Israel and the dream expressed in “from the river to the sea” have presumably been shelved, at least for now.

Once again, things could have ended there, with Iran and its Shia militias retreating to lick their wounds and plot for another day, perhaps with bigger and better rockets and munitions at their disposal. But realpolitik intruded. With Iran distracted and Hezbollah disabled, a group of virulently anti-Assad, anti-Iran, Isis-reared Sunni rebels (known by the acronym HTS) blazed across the country in a matter of weeks and overran the Syrian capital, Damascus. Not only did Iran-allied President Bashar al-Assad flee after 50 years of oppressive family rule, but so did Iran-allied Russia, whose protection of Assad had bought them a huge naval base in Damascus and its closest forward base to the Mediterranean.

It gets hazier here. No one really knows what HTS wants, how they will govern, whether they will resurrect an Islamic state, whether they will ignore Israel (no one is expecting a warm handshake). Indeed, Israel is busy vaporising chemical and other munitions plants all over the newly liberated country (locations courtesy of their famed intelligence services), lest they fall into the hands of an unpredictable new fundamentalist enemy.

Then there is the money owed by the Assad regime to Iran, tens of billions for oil shipments. That’s not going to be paid, adding to Iran’s pile of problems.

Does anyone need a bit more fog? HTS is also engaged in ongoing battles with the Kurds in the north of Syria who have long been battling Turkey for independence, so Turkey also has a dog in this fight. No doubt they are watching the action nervously, and perhaps sending the odd AK-47 to HTS.

Oh, and the US is busy bombing Isis sites in Syria (alongside Israel) while suspiciously watching Syria’s new leader, HTS’s Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, on whose head they have a long-standing $10-million bounty. Do they now reach out to him and wish him well? Or do they renew the bounty? (There must be some serious cognitive dissonance going on at the State Department over this.)

And Russia? Any chance they will leave the area permanently after this clusterfuck? Nope. There is much to be gained by backing the right horse in the region, but it may not be Iran this time.

There is a final question. Who funded HTS? It costs money to overrun a country, to acquire weapons and intelligence. It was probably not Isis, who are not rich. Turkey perhaps, but that seems an adventure too far. The US? Unlikely to fund fundamentalists at this point in their politics. Saudi Arabia, who wishes to dampen Iranian influence? Perhaps. And then there is Israel. An agreement with HTS that says: we will give you the money, arms and intelligence to unseat Assad. You allow us to bomb munitions and ordnance sites to smithereens, so they can never threaten us. And we agree to stay out of each other’s hair in the future. 

Why? Because Iran is Israel’s main existential threat. Assad’s fall would severely weaken them and that would align with a common HTS goal. That, if true, would be some serious strategic chess. 

Iran has seriously overplayed their hand. Not only because they underestimated Israel’s extreme offensive reaction, but also because they underestimated the unpopularity and fragility of the Assad regime. They now have fewer friends and supporters. And let’s not even try to unravel the complexities surrounding the Persian/Arab Shia divide. They may all be brothers under Islam, but the more earthbound ethnic divisions in this region are brittle and harsh, even under the same God.

Great shifts in global power take years, decades, even centuries to unfold.

We are watching this one in real time. DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg and partner at Bridge Capital. His new book, It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership, is published by Maverick451 in South Africa and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.