Over the past four decades, Iran devoted its best military minds, billions of dollars and sophisticated weapons to a grand project — countering U.S. and Israeli power in the Middle East through what it called the “axis of resistance.”
The alliance, made up of like-minded armed groups or governments in five Middle Eastern countries, allowed Iran to project power as far west as the Mediterranean and south to the Arabian Sea.
But in a breathtakingly short time, it has largely unraveled.
Syrian rebel groups ousted the country’s longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in less than two weeks as the government’s military forces put up little resistance. The Lebanese militant and political group Hezbollah and the Palestinian faction Hamas in Gaza are both weakened by more than a year of warfare with Israel.
Still intact are the Iran-linked Iraqi militias and the Houthis in Yemen, but they are geographically more peripheral to the conflict with Israel. So, if Iran were intent on rebuilding its regional alliance, it would likely take years to return to its former strength.