On “Forbes Newsroom,” Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explained why he thinks the end of Bashar al-Assad’s reign in Syria is the start of a chain reaction that will lead to the fall of the Iranian regime.
“It’s a very bad week for the Iranian regime, for the Russian Federation, for Hezbollah, and for the allies of this axis of evil that exist in the Middle East.”
Key Assad allies Iran and Russia are widely believed to have overextended themselves economically and militarily in efforts against Israel and Ukraine, respectively, leading to their inability to bolster the embattled Syrian dictator against a successful overthrow by rebels.
“The Russians and the Iranians, each from their own side and from their own objectives, have invested years and trillions of dollars into propping up the Assad regime,” Conricus told Forbes. “They have lost this strategic investment.”
He sees the defeat of Assad as the start of a domino reaction across the Middle East against Iranian proxies. Hezbollah, a key Iranian proxy in Lebanon, is especially wounded by Assad’s fall, Conricus argued.
“They are absolutely dependent on the delivery of weapons and money and personnel from Iran via Syria into Lebanon,” he said. “Now, if Syria isn’t the same highway of weapons that it used to be, and if they won’t be able to travel there, then Hezbollah in Lebanon is weakened.”
Conricus says Hezbollah being weakened could lead to ethnic and religious minorities in Lebanon to rise up against it, which would further a domino effect that would radically reshape the Middle East.
“The end of that chain reaction is the fall of the Iranian regime,” Conricus told Forbes. “That is where the chain reaction will end. I don’t know how long it will take, and I know that it will take a lot of effort to get there for the Iranian people to rise up against the Iranian regime.”
Watch the full interview above.
