Showing their true colors, major mouthpieces for the neoliberal establishment are gloating in the wake of the ousting of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and at the same time broadcasting their desires for the future. The Atlantic Council’s Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, writes that Iran is in “a weaker regional and global position than perhaps at any time since the 1979 Iranian revolution,” in a Dec. 9 article.
Panikoff makes it clear what he’s most frustrated by Iran, referring to the March 10, 2023 rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia: “Six months ago, many viewed Iran as being in the strongest regional position it had been in decades. Relations with Saudi Arabia had thawed following a rapprochement the previous year…. Iran’s security ties with Russia were becoming more strategic, and its oil sales to China, in violation of U.S. and other sanctions ignored by Beijing, continued to provide revenue.” That is, Iran’s growing strategic relations—centered around stability, economic growth, and peace—with Russia and China.
“Over the past half year, however, Iran’s regional position has completely flipped,” he adds, and goes on to cheer Israel’s destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah, and now Syria.
Panikoff gives a final suggestive hypothetical: “Perhaps at next year’s Doha Forum, we will witness the Iranian foreign minister engaged in frantic meetings for a much different reason: because Iran is sprinting for a nuclear bomb, viewing it as the only way to enhance deterrence and ensure regime survival in its current weakened state and feeling compelled to take riskier actions to survive.”
In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal has a new article titled “Iran Suffers Blow of ‘Historic Proportions’ with Assad’s Fall.” Author Sune Engel Rasmussen argues that the pillars of Iranian influence are now “crashing down” with the fall of Assad. He writes that Syria’s collapse “is the latest strategic catastrophe that will force Iran to rethink decades-old security policies.”
The article also quotes Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran Project, who says that Assad’s toppling destroys the remaining front line of Iran’s so-called “forward defense,” and another analyst who called it a “strategic blow of historic proportions.”
