Continuity and Increasing Growth of the Resistance Despite Developments in Syria

Strategic Council Online—Opinion: It is noteworthy that Bashar al-Assad's government was an ally of the Islamic Resistance Front and that his fall from power is a challenge to this front. However, for various reasons, such an event can never be considered a “defeat” for the Resistance Front in the region.

Hamid Khoshayand – Regional Affairs Expert

There are significant points regarding the impact of recent developments in Syria on the Resistance Front, the most important of which are discussed below:

One, the media and political circles of the United States and the Israeli regime are still trying to instill the impression that the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government showed that Iran’s presence and spending in Syria were useless. However, the reality is that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not regret its presence and spending in Syria and in confronting ISIS at all.

Iran’s presence and spending in Syria should be assessed in proportion to the “requirements” and “necessities” that have arisen and in due time. Iran’s presence in Syria was initially intended to destroy ISIS, and the result was satisfactory.

If the Islamic Republic of Iran had not entered Syria at that time and stood up to ISIS, it would have had to confront ISIS at tens of times the cost inside the country and in its surroundings today.

Two, those who talk about the weakening of the Islamic Resistance with the fall of Bashar al-Assad have their mental presuppositions focused more on Hezbollah and the Palestinian Resistance.

First, although the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government will cause problems in ground support routes for Hezbollah, it will not fundamentally disrupt its survival and capability. Hezbollah has reached the stage of “self-sufficiency” in terms of having military infrastructure and producing large quantities of missile weapons and drones with different ranges.

It is very important that Amos Yadlin, the former head of the Israeli military intelligence, emphasizes that Hezbollah has enormous military capabilities and an arsenal of missiles that surpasses the arsenals of European countries such as France and Britain. Without a doubt, this amount of military capability was not created only due to transit through Syria.

Hezbollah and even the Palestinian Resistance today have reached a stage of “knowledge and technology” that can produce and possess the necessary weapons. According to a report published by the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, “In the past year of fighting, the Hezbollah and the Palestinian Resistance have acquired reverse engineering knowledge and are producing some Israeli weapons, including a reverse-engineered version of the advanced Spike anti-tank missile!”

Second, although resistance was defined in the past and under certain circumstances as being based on territory and weapons, today, there is no such approach to Resistance. Resistance has a wide scope and encompasses various dimensions and aspects of political, international, legal, etc. resistance.

Since its formation, the Islamic Resistance has not relied on specific individuals, states, or geography for its fate and survival. It would have disappeared years ago if it had defined itself as hardware and relied on individuals and states.

The Islamic Resistance is fundamentally based on an ideology, thinking, deep and comprehensive belief, and discourse based on mainly non-state support and formed in asymmetrical conditions. It does not disappear with changes in governments.

Three; Political changes in Syria and the fall of Bashar al-Assad from power cannot alone be considered a criterion for evaluating the Islamic Republic of Iran’s performance on the Islamic Resistance Front. The Syrian government was only one of its “pillars” that played a supporting and logistical role for the Lebanese Resistance.

On the other hand, the conditions in Syria are also “unstable,” and there is still no accurate analysis or assessment of the future of its current developments. What is clear is that today’s Syria is in a completely different situation than yesterday’s Syria. Since Syria’s independence, this country has never been attacked and humiliated by the Zionist regime and one of the regional governments in this way.

The Zionist regime’s optimism about what happened in Syria, and in fact, it is one of its “main architects,” will lead to “counterproductive results” in the long run. Syrian society and public opinion will not be able to tolerate the destruction of its military power and the occupation of more than 450 square kilometers of their country’s territory by the Zionist regime forever. Certainly, in the not-so-distant future, Syrian society elites and various political groups will face the Israeli regime.

Four, The Resistance Front is a large “front” with “pillars” and diverse and different aspects. Its achievements should also be examined in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and other regions. For example, over the past year, the most intense, costly, inhumane, asymmetric, and longest war waged by the Zionist regime has failed to break the resistance in Lebanon and Gaza and force them to surrender. This is even though during this period, the United States has provided the Zionist regime with more than $25 billion in military and economic aid and 125,000 tons of weapons and bombs to destroy Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

Despite all this military aid and economic, political, diplomatic, legal, and Western support for the Israeli regime, as a result of the Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and the anti-Zionist actions of the Resistance Front, the regime is now facing new dimensions and forms of existential threats that have never been seen before.

In any case, the Islamic Resistance Front was created in hardship, grew under sanctions and political pressures etc., came to power under challenging circumstances, and will continue to grow.