Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” collapses under Israeli strikes and regional shifts - Ivo Vegter

Key topicsIsrael dismantles Iran-backed militant network after 7 Oct 2023 attackHezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and Assad regime severely weakenedIran’s military gutted; future now hinges on internal uprising or reform.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Ivo Vegter.Iran is no longer a major Middle-Eastern power. Its entire strategy lies in ruins, and its allies are largely defeated.As the sun set on the bloody slaughter of 7 October 2023, it was hard to imagine what the future would hold.That Israel would respond with force against Hamas was a certainty. That Israel would be blamed by its enemies for doing so was also entirely predictable.That the invasion by Hamas would precipitate the collapse of the entire Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” in little more than a year and a half, however, few would have predicted.And yet, that’s what happened. Iran no longer controls its own airspace. Its military has been gutted by decapitation strikes against senior ranks. Its missile manufacturing capability has been severely curtailed, and its nuclear facilities heavily damaged. Its feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a paper tiger. Its carefully nurtured non-state allies have gone silent.Axis of ResistanceThe brutal, undemocratic, and repressive Shi’ite theocracy of Iran, which had been the malevolent heart of what George W. Bush once called the “Axis of Evil” – referring to Iraq, Iran and North Korea – responded by establishing what it called an “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States.Its religious leaders described these countries as “Little Satan” and “Great Satan”, and repeatedly vowed to destroy Israel and push back against American influence in the Middle East.It maintained its end of the balance of forces in the Middle East by recruiting Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government and a rogue’s gallery of non-state armed extremist groups to form its Axis of Resistance.These organisations included Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was once considered the most powerful non-state actor in the world; Hamas, a Sunni group which tyrannised the Gaza Strip; Yemen’s Houthi militias; the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which was allied to Assad’s ruling Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party; member groups of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and the Popular Mobilisation Forces, also in Iraq; and Shi-ite militias based in Bahrain.A motley crew with sometimes divergent interests and ideologies, most of these organisations are recognised internationally as terrorist groups, and all share the explicit objective of wiping Israel off the map and pushing the Jews into the sea.As a consequence, Iran is widely viewed as the leading state sponsor of terrorism.Defensive shieldIran viewed the Axis of Resistance as a defensive shield that would protect it (and its nascent nuclear weapons programme) from direct Israeli or American attack. The knowledge that an Israeli strike on Iran would precipitate attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets from all directions, was thought to be a sufficient deterrent.Conversely, the Axis of Resistance was viewed as a “ring of fire” around Israel. It “aimed to annihilate and wipe out Israel from existence,” according to Abdul Majeed Awad, head of Hamas’s political and media relations office in Lebanon, shortly after the 7 October attack.Instead, Israel wiped the Axis of Resistance from existence. Its most prominent members lie prostrate and powerless while Israel overflew their air space to dismantle their patron’s military capability with pin-point accuracy.Lit the fuseThe Hamas operation on 7 October 2023 that lit the fuse was supported by Iran after the fact, but also took it by surprise.Hamas was never entirely under Iran’s control, did not share Iran’s Shi’ite beliefs, and had objectives of its own. Though they amounted to the same thing – the destruction of Israel – Hamas acted in a way that Iran would not have approved, had it been asked for permission.It would have known that attacking Israel while it was distracted by its own internal conflicts – involving a hardline prime minister facing corruption charges and widespread popular protests – would likely galvanise the Israelis, strengthen its prime minister’s position, and give it the excuse it needed to move against the Axis of Resistance.This, Israel did. It started with a campaign against Hamas that many thought unnecessarily brutal, but which Israel vowed to sustain until the last of the hostages (or their remains) were released, and Hamas was disarmed, never to rule Gaza again.HezbollahHezbollah, on Israel’s northern border, attacked Israel “in solidarity with” Hamas, and Israel moved to defend itself.Demonstrating the reach of its intelligence bureau, Mossad, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah exploded on 17 September 2024. A day later, hundreds of walkie-talkies did the same. A reported 1,500 enemy fighters, many of them senior leaders, were taken out of action.In combination with air strikes, and targeted attacks against newly appointed leadership figures, Israel critically weakened Hezbollah, to the point where it posed little further threat.In Syria, rebel fighters took advantage of Israel’s war against Hezbollah to mount a lightning offensive against the Ba’athist government of Bashar al-Assad. Within days, the Assad regime fell and Assad and his family fled to asylum in Russia.A Sunni militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, proclaimed victory, and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, became the de facto ruler of Syria, later becoming president of a transitional government. He has stated that he wants Syria to become a “normal country”, has promised religious tolerance for non-Muslims, and swore off Islamic extremism and terrorism.Israel, having waited until the fall of Damascus to exploit the power vacuum, swept in to destroy Syria’s military capabilities, both on land and at sea, and including its chemical weapons facilities.With that, the only state member of the Axis of Resistance, once described by a senior Iranian official as “the golden ring of the resistance chain in the region”, was gone..Read more:.BN Briefing: Trump's F-bomb, Israel on ceasefire/aims, Mashatile's triad, FinMin's drink cabinet.HouthisThe Houthis, another Iranian proxy which controls large swathes of Yemen and opposes the internationally recognised government of Yemen, joined the Israel-Hamas war on 19 October 2023.Demanding an end to Israel’s action against Hamas, it ineffectually lobbed missiles at Israel’s “Iron Dome” defence system, and more effectively fired missiles at international merchant shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea on the way to (or from) the Suez Canal.These attacks deterred shipping through the strait between Yemen and Djibouti, and effectively shut down the major Israeli trade port of Eilat.Israeli, American, and British retaliation has significantly degraded Houthi capabilities, but have not dissuaded them from further attacks. While the group continues to pose a threat to civilian shipping and global trade, it does not pose an existential threat to Israel.Like Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis have been entirely silent while Israeli air strikes pummelled their patron, Iran.Nuclear non-complianceA day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared Iran to be in violation of its nuclear obligations under international agreements, on 12 June 2025, even though renewed negotiations between the United States and Iran were still being mooted, Israel struck. It wasn’t the first time Israel had attacked Iran directly since the war in Gaza broke out, but it was the first comprehensive campaign designed to curtail its nuclear weapons ambitions and military capabilities.Once again, the long arm of Mossad helped. Secret agents had established a covert drone base near Tehran, from where Iran’s air defences and missile infrastructure were sabotaged, giving Israel complete air superiority. Israel also had locations for many senior officials and military targets, and agents inside Iran to assassinate military leadership.Iran neuteredIn the 12 days since Israel launched its campaign against Iran, it has destroyed a majority of Iran’s air defences and missile launch sites, as well as missile manufacturing plants. It has struck military and other strategic targets across Iran, freely overflying both the air corridor between Israel and Iran and Iranian airspace itself.The US, for its part, used B2 long-range heavy bombers to drop 14 of its largest “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s three most heavily fortified nuclear facilities, where Iran was clearly continuing its pursuit of nuclear weapons.It is unclear to what extent these facilities were damaged or destroyed, and Iran appears to have moved its stock of highly enriched uranium – enough to make several bombs – to an undisclosed location. The IAEA has lost track of this material.Iran has lobbed a few missiles at Israel. The vast majority were intercepted, either by Israel, or by allied countries including the US, France, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. A handful got through, causing some damage in Tel Aviv and killing several dozen civilians. Iran has also attacked an American base in Qatar, reportedly without causing any casualties.At the time of writing, a tense cease-fire appears to be taking hold. It mostly holds back Israel, however, since Iran appears to be dead in the water. It is incapable of mounting any substantial military response to Israeli and American strikes. Its allies in the Axis of Resistance have been notable only for their complete absence from the war.Iran has lost.Israel’s futureWhat is clear is that the Axis of Resistance has been dismantled. The future of the region, however, is not yet apparent.While Israel will continue to act against terrorism and remnants of the Axis of Resistance, it now clearly has the upper hand in the Middle East. It is now free to continue the normalisation of relations with the Sunni Arab states that surround it.This process began slowly, with the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979 and the Israel–Jordan peace treaty in 1994 but accelerated with the Abraham Accords in 2020 involving the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.Unofficially, relations have been warming, and cooperation and trade increasing, between Israel and Sunni Arab nations for the last two decades.What is much less clear is how the Palestinian conflict will now be resolved. Israel will be in a stronger position vis-à-vis the armed militias ranged against it, and those militias will likely enjoy far less support from Iran in future.A two-state solution might still be on the cards, but it is no longer the only plausible outcome. Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister will have to face the music eventually, which could significantly soften the country’s approach towards Palestine.Iran’s futureIn Iran, the future is even more uncertain. Neither the US nor Israel appear to have the appetite to go any further and potentially effect “regime change”. Having largely disarmed Iran, they will leave the Iranian people to determine their own future.Over the decades since 1979, there have been many popular uprisings against the theocratic extremists that have a stranglehold on the country. The time seems ripe for a new uprising aimed at overthrowing the brutal, ultra-conservative mullahs.Both Israel and the US will likely support such an uprising but might be tempted to support the restoration of the Iranian monarchy as an alternative to religious rule.That would be a mistake, as it was back in 1953, when they engineered a coup in favour of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi only to produce a corrupt authoritarian regime that was overthrown by popular revolt in 1979.That revolution began as a pluralistic democratic movement, before being hijacked by the Shi’ite extremists that subjected the Iranian parliament to the ultimate authority of the supreme religious leader.Although it doesn’t appear so on the surface, secular liberal democracy has a long and venerable history in Iran, and many brave and vocal supporters among the Iranian people. It will be up to those people to rise up against their failed authoritarian rulers, and demand that power, and freedom, be surrendered to the people.A new flowering of freedom in Iran could be the final nail in the coffin of state support for religious extremism and terrorism in the Middle East..*This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission

Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” collapses under Israeli strikes and regional shifts - Ivo Vegter

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