Iran in post-Assad Middle East: Will Khamenei's 2024 gamble haunt him in 2025?

“Some people, due to a lack of proper analysis and understanding, claim that with the recent events in the region, the blood shed in defense of the shrine was wasted,” Khamenei said in a Wednesday ceremony to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of former Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

He was Iran’s most influential figure in coordinating armed allied groups in the region and was killed by the US in Iraq in 2020.

“They are making this grave mistake; the blood was not wasted,” Khamenei continued.

The defense of the shrine refers to a narrative promoted by Iran as a reason for its military presence in Syria and Iraq. This concept centers around the protection of Shi’a Islamic holy sites, particularly the Shrine of Sayyida Zainab in Damascus, Syria. Sayyida Zainab was the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad. However, following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Khamenei’s rhetoric expanded beyond shrine defense, openly advocating an all-out war against Israel.

The comments by Khamenei follow a series of regional setbacks for Iran in 2024, as its network of proxy and allied groups faced regular Israeli countermeasures.

Hamas's military power has been almost completely diminished by Israel. Israel has also intensified its campaign against Hezbollah with precise airstrikes, covert operations, and intelligence-led targeting of the group's assets in Lebanon and Syria. These actions aim to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities, disrupt its supply lines, and prevent the transfer of advanced weapons from Iran.

In Yemen, the Houthis encountered resistance from local factions, and devastating air attacks by Israel, the US and UK. These setbacks underscore the diminishing reach of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a strategy central to Khamenei’s regional ambitions.

In Syria, a key pillar of Iran’s influence, the Assad government fell after 13 years of Iranian support. Since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, Iran has heavily invested in preserving Assad’s government, seeing it as vital for maintaining access to Hezbollah and projecting power across the Levant. The loss of Assad unraveled these investments and severed Iran’s land corridor to Lebanon, undermining its ability to supply Hezbollah with arms.

Reclaiming Syria

Despite these challenges, Khamenei repeated his commitment to regional interventions on Wednesday, praising Soleimani for building pro-Iran groups across the region.

In a veiled reference to Syria's new strongman Ahmad al-Sharaa, Khamenei said: “Do not be deceived by this false show; those who are strutting around today will one day be trampled under the feet of the faithful. Those who have encroached on the land of the Syrian people will one day be forced to retreat in the face of the power of Syria's youth.”

This marks the third time Khamenei has promised to reclaim Syria from its new rulers. On December 11 and 23, he made similar vows, encouraging Syrian youth to resist Assad’s successors.

He also described Houthis and Hezbollah as symbols of resistance, adding that they would ultimately prevail. Without naming specific countries, he criticized certain nations for “sidelining their faithful youth,” whom he called “pillars of stability and strength,” warning that they risk facing Syria’s fate.

Iran International analyst Morad Veisi suggested that Khamenei’s rhetoric reflects a refusal to accept regional realities. “Rather than acknowledging his mistakes, he attempts to reshape facts to align with his vision,” Veisi said, adding that this approach has drained Iran’s resources and alienated its neighbors.

These remarks coincide with admissions by Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem, who acknowledged that Assad’s fall has disrupted the group’s primary supply route through Syria. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Assad’s downfall has caused confusion among Iranian officials.

Khamenei also praised Soleimani, saying that he utilized the potential of the region's youth to revive the Resistance Front. However, his statements contrasted with a prior speech in which he denied that Iran operates proxy forces in the region.

As Iran’s influence wanes and its regional allies face mounting challenges, Khamenei’s insistence on reclaiming Syria underscores the strain on the Islamic Republic’s strategy.

The decision to eliminate the mastermind behind Tehran’s expanding military and political influence from Iraq to Lebanon and Yemen demonstrated how removing a single figure can disrupt an entire system—and alter a region's dynamics.

Soleimani was a key architect of Iran’s Middle East strategy. Though not the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, he was its most influential leader. His impact on the regime’s regional policies far outweighed that of any elected official, including Iran’s president.

The aftermath of his assassination revealed the strategic significance of Trump’s bold decision on January 3, 2020. The resulting shifts in regional power dynamics and successive defeats for Iran and its Quds Force highlighted how this single act disrupted Tehran’s ambitions.

General Kenneth McKenzie, then-head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), detailed the operation in his book Degrade and Destroy. McKenzie explained that Soleimani had been within US targeting range before, but former President Barack Obama refrained from authorizing his assassination due to fears of escalation. This restraint allowed Soleimani to consolidate his influence across the Middle East. Trump’s decisive move, however, ended that era.

McKenzie also noted that forces under Soleimani’s command carried out 19 attacks on US bases in Iraq in 2019 alone. A December 2019 strike that killed an American contractor became the immediate trigger for the decision to eliminate Soleimani.

The assassination dealt a major blow to Iran’s influence in the region, particularly to the Quds Force. It sent a clear message to Tehran: escalation would be met with decisive retaliation. Soleimani’s death exemplified this strategy and revealed vulnerabilities in Iran’s regional power structure.

Following Soleimani’s killing, Iran’s proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militias, experienced significant operational setbacks. The regime struggled to fill the void left by Soleimani, a reality so stark that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly sought to downplay the impact. However, Iran’s diminished influence in the Middle East became undeniable.

More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline policies have further altered the region’s dynamics. Tehran’s miscalculations, including encouraging Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, prompted an intensified Israeli campaign against Iran’s proxies.

These actions led to the defeat of Hamas, the weakening of Hezbollah, and even the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. As a result, Iran’s regional proxy network has been severely eroded, leaving its influence significantly diminished.

The decisions by Trump to eliminate Soleimani and by Netanyahu to target key Iranian and proxy leaders demonstrate how firm action against the Islamic Republic can reshape regional dynamics. Today, the effects of these decisions are evident in the weakened state of Iran and its proxies across the Middle East.

A joint statement from Israel’s security services and the police, said that Alexander Granovsky, a resident of Petah Tikva, was arrested this month after being suspected of spying for Iran, in a plot which had involved photographing the entrance to former defense minister Benny Gantz's residential neighborhood.

He is also accused of setting eight cars on fire around Israel and photographing a sensitive facility in the center of the country.

Granovsky had also sprayed "Children of Ruhollah” on various buildings, referring to Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.

The investigation also revealed that the man’s handlers discussed with him the possibility of obtaining a rifle and grenades to shoot at houses.

He had also been asked to gather information on the residential addresses of ministers in the Israeli government, and to set fire to a police car, a bus, and a truck, but Alexander refused to carry out the tasks.

A prosecutor's statement was filed against him on Monday and an indictment is expected to be filed against him in the Central District Court in the coming days.

A statement from Israel Police said Granovsky had, like those cases previously, been lured by money.

"This case joins a series of cases from the past year that teaches about repeated efforts by terrorist and hostile intelligence agencies to recruit Israeli citizens for the sake of carrying out tasks intended to harm the security of the country of Israel and its inhabitants,” the statement said.

Multiple cases have been foiled in Israel this year as Iran steps up its attempts to infiltrate the country through its citizens in the wake of the Gaza war. Arrests of both men and women have taken place this year from all over Israel, in cash for intelligence plots.

"The Israeli regime's claim that martyr Haniyeh was assassinated using a bomb at his official residence in Tehran is completely baseless," Hamas said in a statement.

The group added that joint investigations with Iranian security agencies revealed the operation involved a 7.5-kilogram guided missile that directly targeted Haniyeh's mobile phone.

On Saturday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that an explosive device was planted in advance in Haniyeh's bedroom in the Neshat compound of the Revolutionary Guards, before an air conditioning malfunction almost jeopardized the entire operation.

"We were expecting positive statements from Tehran”, the leader of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham said as Tehran remains tight-lipped on what happens next. Syria had been a key route to arm its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, and was strategically critical militarily with bases and military personnel stationed across Syria.

While he expressed hope that Tehran would scale back its military intervention in the region, he said that "a broad segment [of the country] aspires to a positive Iranian role in the region,” the Syrian population having seen both Iran and Russia heavily involved in Syrian affairs since the 2011 civil war.

Referring to the killing of an Iranian embassy worker and the storming of the Iranian embassy on December 8, when rebels took control of Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, he told Al Arabiya that the group’s military “did its duty towards the Iranian headquarters despite the injuries”.

It sparked a diplomatic fiasco in Tehran. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said last week that Davood Bitaraf was killed by “terrorists”, shot in his vehicle in Damascus, saying that the Syrian transitional government is responsible for "identifying, prosecuting, and punishing the perpetrators of this crime.”

In a statement to the media, he said: ”The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is seriously pursuing the matter through appropriate channels and various diplomatic and international avenues.”

The new leader, a former member of Al Qaeda, has made no secret of his pleasure at reducing the influence of Iran in Syria, saying that since the fall of Assad, Syria's opposition had “set the Iranian project in the region back by 40 years”.

“By removing Iranian militias and closing Syria to Iranian influence, we’ve served the region’s interests—achieving what diplomacy and external pressure could not, with minimal losses,” he said, referring to Iran’s military allies which span the Middle East.