By Charlie Hutchinson, Regional Manager, Ukraine
In September 2020, in a foreign policy coup for Donald Trump, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan signed the Abraham Accords, designed to normalise relations between them and Israel. Iran, keen to disrupt any cooperation between regional Sunni competition and its sworn enemy, increased its support both to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.
Iranian support to Hamas culminated in the 7th October attack on Israel, which killed over 1,000 Israelis and saw 251 taken hostage. The objective was not simply a physical attack, but to set the region alight. Akin to Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 strike, the Iranians hoped that an Israeli reaction, or overreaction, would alienate any Arab nations considering their own normalisations with Israel and perhaps derail the Abraham Accords themselves.
The West- with Trump no longer in office, an embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine all since the Accords were signed- was not in the mood for another regional conflict to turn hot and urged Israel to show restraint. But instead, Israel went on to all but destroy Hamas in Gaza and, while the window of opportunity was open, decapitate Hezbollah, Iran’s main proxy in the region with an audacious series of operations.
After Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, was killed in a helicopter crash in May this year, his successor, Masoud Pezeshkian, oversaw a transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia. The fact that the deal had been agreed under Raisi was irrelevant; further sanctions were put on Iran and after further missile strikes on Israel in October, any hopes that Pezeshkian might be able to warm relations with the West, however marginally, were further dashed. Iran had begun to look vulnerable and, without Hezbollah, strategically adrift.
After the 7th October attack, many worried that Western (and mainly US) attention would be taken away from the war in Ukraine. The 6-month pause in American military aid to Ukraine proved those fears correct. Yet in just the same way, with Iran weakened and Russia’s focus on Ukraine in the run-up to Trump’s second presidency, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took its own opportunity to move on Damascus. In a lightning campaign, Assad fled the country in a matter of days, all but abandoned by a weakened Iran and an overstretched Russia.
With HTS in control of Syria, Iran no longer has a viable overland route to southern Lebanon. But more significantly, unless the Kremlin can make a deal with Syria’s new leadership, in Tartus, Russia will lose its only warm water port south of the Bosphorus (closed to Russian warships due to its invasion of Ukraine). If that were to happen, any Russian naval deployments to the Mediterranean would have to come from Murmansk, which remains at the mercy of Arctic winters, or Kaliningrad, from where ships will need to pass between Denmark and Sweden, both NATO members (ironically, Sweden joined earlier this year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). Either way, Russian deployments to the Mediterranean would be forced to pass through the Straights of Gibraltar, overlooked by British forces on the Rock. After Ukraine’s near defeat of the Russian navy on the Black Sea, Russia is now potentially facing homelessness on the Mediterranean, too. Its operations in Africa could be seriously compromised unless it can get a base in Tobruk, which will also be vulnerable to Libyan “complexities”.
Iran, now seriously weakened without its Hezbollah proxies to call on and the Assad regime toppled, is perhaps more vulnerable to regime change now than at any point in recent history. If the Ayatollahs’ regime were indeed to fall, the implications for the Russia-Ukraine war would be significant, as would the consequences for the Middle East more widely. Not only would Iranian materiel support for Russia be jeopardised, but a key means of Russian leverage on the West be neutralised: the threat of supplying Iran with military and nuclear technology that threatens not only Israel but also the West’s oil-rich allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, and shipping through the Red Sea. Russia will be keen to maintain the current status quo in Iran, but as Syria has shown, it would find itself significantly overstretched and facing a resurgent West. Accordingly, the Russian hand in any negotiations over Ukraine at the start of 2025 will be weakened, potentially significantly so, should the situation continue to unravel for Iran.
What happened on October 7th may be the first domino in a broader unravelling of anti-Western alliances and a faint beacon of hope for Ukraine. The opportunities that present themselves after the fall of Assad would not have precipitated had Israel heeded the West’s call to stand down.
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