Name: How Israel Checkmated Iran
Uploaded: 2026-01-28T17:13:07.000Z
Duration: 43 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

For 54 years, since the early 1970s, the Assad family continually dominated Syria's government.

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

The most serious challenge to the family's long rule over the country erupted in 2011, when protests evolved into revolution, which evolved into full scale civil war.

Then, after nearly a decade of brutal fighting throughout the country that claimed the lives of around 600,000 people and forced more than 6 million others to flee the country as refugees, the war entered into a tenuous ceasefire in 2020 that largely froze the front lines where they stood at the time, which left the Assad regime and control over most of the country's major cities and population centers.

Then, over time, most of the world began moving on from the conflict in Syria.

And after years had passed with a ceasefire generally holding steady, many began presuming that Assad, along with his Russian and Iranian supporters, had effectively won the war, or that Syria had become a frozen conflict.

But then, four years into the ceasefire generally holding steady, it was suddenly shattered by a renewed rebel offensive against the government that began at the end of November in 2024, and

to the complete shock of just about everybo, this renewed rebel offensive exposed the Assad regime in the country as an empty house of cards.

And The Assad family's 54 year long rule in the country was decisively overthrown in a matter of only 11 days.

Since then, this sudden and unexpected collapse of such a long lasting regime in such a strategically significant country has generated one of the 21st century's most substantial geopolitical earthquakes, the aftershocks of which will be felt far and wide throughout the world as the players on the Middle east chessboard recalibrate their moves and plays.

Now that board has shifted so dramatically.

In particular, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria will most catastrophically affect what were his regime's two biggest international supporters, Iran and Russia, almost to the point of effectively checkmating both of their ambitions in the Middle Eastern theater permanently.

And at the same time, Iran and Russia's enormous geopolitical losses in Syria will be matched by the enormous gains that will go to both Turkey and Israel, the two countries who were the Assad regime's biggest regional opponents.

So, to understand what the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria means for the future, and

how it completely screws over both Iran and Russia, let's start with how it screws over Iran first, and

then move on to how it screws over Russia next.

First of all, the Assad regime's rule in Syria represented the linchpin in Iran's overall strategy.

For confronting their archenemy, the Israelis.

Iran's revolutionary government has always been opposed to the existence of Israel and has been locked in a shadow war across the Middle east with Tel Aviv for decades.

The Assads in Syria, though lacking Iran's particular ideology of Islamist revolutionary fervor, shared the exact same enemies as revolutionary Iran had.

Israel, the United States and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

This led Assyria, under Assad family rule, quickly aligning itself to the young Islamic Republic as a mutual bulwark against their shared enemies.

Syria became the first Arab state to recognize Iran's new revolutionary government after 1979, and

it was the only Middle Eastern state to openly support Iran during its brutal eight war against Saddam's Iraq throughout the 1980s.

In the aftermath of that war, Syria and Iran remained mutually aligned against their shared enemy, Israel.

And so the Assads in Syria granted the Iranians open access to their country's territory in order to fly in arms, supplies and advisers, who were then able to travel into neighboring Lebanon where they trained up and built an organization out of Lebanon's Shia Muslim community that eventually became known as Hezbollah.

So Syria's deep friendship with Iran and its space on the board made it an invaluable asset to Iran's strategy in confronting Israel, effectively serving as Iran's most important land bridge towards Iran's most important proxy force, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

After the collapse of Saddam's anti Iran and anti Syria government In Iraq after 2003, Iran's logistical supply route to Hezbollah was even further opened up by land and air alike, enabling Iranian trucks, escorted by friendly Shia paramilitaries in Iraq to travel continually through Iraqi territory and then friendly Syrian territory directly to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This was how over a span of years, across the late 2000s and the 2010s, Iran was able to arm and build up Hezbollah directly on Israel's northern border into a truly formidable fighting force with an estimated 50,000 fighters and around 150,000 missiles and rockets by 2023, which earned Hezbollah the recognition of being the most heavily armed non state actor in the entire world and Iran's most valuable.

Hezbollah's massive fighting force and its arsenal of missiles and rockets effectively became Iran's ultimate insurance policy against the risk of a direct Israeli or American air campaign against their own nuclear and military sites or government infrastructure in Iran.

If the Americans and the Israelis ever decided to bomb Iran, Iran could always just authorize Hezbollah to rain down their hellfire upon Israel from Lebanon, thus ensuring some form of mutually assured destruction and deterrence against Israel.

It was Iran's strategy to put pressure on Israel and to keep any fighting between them far away from Iran's own borders.

And thus Syria's territory was the absolute linchpin in this entire strategy, because without it, Iran would have no way to continue resupplying and supporting Hezbollah and Lebanon.

This is why, when the civil war erupted in Syria and the Assad government looked like it might collapse, Iran and Hezbollah both intervened directly on Assad's behalf against the rebels with thousands of foot soldiers and fighters in order to keep their supply route open against Israel.

So now, after the Assad regime's sudden collapse at the end of 2024, Iran has also probably lost that invaluable land bridge across Syrian territory that they've been able to reliably use to support Hezbollah and Lebanon with for decades, ever since Hezbollah's very founding.

To make matters even worse, Hezbollah was also very badly bloodied by the Israelis during their war.

Between September And November of 2024, right before the Assad regime collapsed, Israel had managed to catastrophically infiltrate Hezbollah as an organization.

And through a series of major surprise attacks, they were able to destroy the organization's communications and eliminated virtually all of Hezbollah's top leadership, including Hezbollah's top leader himself, Hassan Nasrallah.

Thousands of Hezbollah's rank and file fighters were either killed or incapacitated by the Israeli attacks.

And by November of 2024, with Hezbollah effectively paralyzed and incapable of responding effectively, the IDF claimed that the relentless aerial had successfully destroyed more than 80% of the organization's once feared missile and rocket arsenal.

Indeed, Hezbollah's catastrophic losses inflicted by the Israelis led directly to the Syrian rebels calculating that they would be too weak to intervene in Syria to save Assad once again, which contributed to their ultimate victory in overthrowing Assad so rapidly without Hezbollah's support.

So now, with Hezbollah compromised and spent force, with as much as 80% of their Iranian supplied missile and rocket arsenal destroyed, and

with the Assad regime in Syria top coupled, Iran will find it incredibly difficult, if not even impossible, to rebuild Hezbollah back into even a fraction of the menace it used to appear to the Israelis prior to 2024.

And with that, Iran's ultimate insurance policy against an Israeli and American attack has been completely undone.

The loss of Assad in Syria also means that Iran has lost the only UN member state that was truly aligned to it in the Middle East.

And with Hezbollah now crippled and firmly isolated from Iran, and

with Hamas being increasingly destroyed in Gaza, Iran' strategy of Putting pressure on Israel's borders and keeping the fight away from their own borders that they spent decades carefully putting in a place, was completely undone in only a matter of days.

And then, to make matters still even worse for Iran and Hezbollah, the Israelis have taken steps since the fall of the Assad regime to increase their momentum and advantages even further.

On 8th December, the very same day that the Assad regime was actively collapsing and Assad himself fled Syria to Russia, the IDF's ground forces seized on the opportunity and advanced from their positions in the Gol Heights to occupy the Purple Line, the UN established buffer zone between the Israeli occupied Golan Heights taken from Syria in 1967, and

the rest of Syria that was established after the Yom Kippur War in 1974.

Since the Syrian army withdrew from their side of the Purple Line as the Assad government was actively collapsing, the Israelis were able to seize control over it and some surrounding areas without even having to fire a shot.

In total, the Israelis seized control over an area in Syria about two thirds the size of the Gaza Strip.

And though it will be universally rejected by the new Syrian government and by international law, and

despite Israel insisting that the new occupation is only temporary, Israel will be very unlikely to ever give it up voluntarily because of how immensely strategically important it is for them.

The most important part of the Purple Line that the Israelis took over in the advance was the Syrian side of the summit of Mount Hermon.

At an elevation of 2,814 meters above sea level, it's the highest point anywhere in Syria and the highest geographical point in the region for 100 km.

By taking control of the mountain's summit, Israel has opened up the ability to position their artillery there to be within striking range of the Syrian capital, Damascus, only about 40km away.

Even more importantly, in the past, the towering height of Mount Hermon outside of Israel's control also created a significant blind spot in Israel's northern early warning radar defenses.

Based on the summit of Mount Meron at just 1,204 meters above sea level, the highest elevated point anywhere within Israel's internationally recognized borders, these radar systems struggle to see anything beyond the towering height of Mount Hermon about 60 kilometers away, which stands over 1600 meters higher up in elevation than Mount Meron does.

As a result, low flying drones and other aircraft from Hezbollah or Iran could take advantage of this blind spot to infiltrate into Israel's northern airspace undetected.

While the COVID provided by Mount Hermon enabled Hezbollah and Iran to establish their primary smuggling routes from Syria to the north of the mountain, and

which also connected Hezbollah's two zones of control in southern Lebanon and the northeastern Baca Valley with each other.

But now, with Israel's takeover of Mount Hermon's summit, all of these capabilities that Hezbollah and Iran have enjoyed ever since Hezbollah's founding have been effectively eliminated.

In time, Israel will establish early warning, radar, observation and air defense systems on the mountain's summit that will enable the Israelis to see deep into both Syria and Hezbollah's strongholds in Lebanon like they've never been able to do before.

Sensors placed at the top of the mountain will be able to intercept local communications.

All of Hezbollah's traditional smuggling routes from Syria will be openly within the IDF's lines of sight, while low flying drones and missiles fired into northern Israel will no longer be capable of exploiting the mountain as a blind spot.

All of this means that even if Syria somehow remained friendly to Iran and Hezbollah, which is extremely unlikely, Hezbollah's ability to receive resupplies and arms from Iran has still been severely compromised just by Israel's seizure of Mount Hermon.

Moreover, Israel also took further steps after the seizure of Mount Hermon to expose Iran itself to a major direct attack, the likes of which it has never been before in its entire history.

Over the following eight days, after the Assad regime collapsed in Syria, as the country was incapable of responding, the Israeli Air Force carried out an enormous bombing campaign all across the country that saw Israeli warplanes striking targets in Syria around 600 times.

It's since been described as the largest aerial operation ever carried out in the history of the Israeli Air Force force, and

it relentlessly targeted the Assad regime's arms depots, weapons storage sites, air bases, naval assets, anti air batteries, radar installations and weapons production sites.

Through all of these attacks, the Israeli Air Force claims to have completely destroyed the entire Syrian Navy and to have blown up roughly 80% of Syria's strategic heavy weapons.

More importantly, the Israelis also claim to have tripled all of the radar systems in Syria and to have destroyed around 90% of Syria's surface to air missiles and their accompanying launch systems.

The Israelis claim that this entire operation was done in order to prevent the Syrian army's assets from coming into the hands of an unpredictable new government in Syria that might or might not turn out to be hostile to Israel.

But the real reason that the Israelis appear to have done all of that is to open up the door to a major direct attack on Iran itself.

Some officials in the Israeli military have characterized this operation as having turned the whole of Syria into a so called sterile defensive.

With practically all of the Syrian Army's radar, early warning and anti air systems destroyed by the operation, the Israelis have essentially opened up the whole of Syrian airspace to their own unrestricted use for whatever operation they want to pursue there.

Before this, the Israeli Air Force was highly constrained in the types of operations that it can actually conduct directly against Iran.

Because of Syria and its close ties with Iran, Israel has already acquired a total of 39 ultra modern F35 stealth fighter jets from the United States States and they've placed orders for another 36 more of them, which notably makes them the only country in the Middle east that actually operates the F35.

Now, the F35's stealth capabilities were advanced enough that they could have flown across Syrian airspace undetected by Syria's older and largely Soviet era air defenses.

But the problem is that they only have an operational range of around 1,200 nautical miles for combat missions.

The northernmost air base in Israel the fighter jets can actually operate out of is Ramit David airbase here.

And it's about 630nautical miles away from Iran's furthest west border as the crow flies.

Which means that Israel's incredibly expensive F35s couldn't fly through Syria's air defenses and attack targets in Iran and also have enough fuel left over to return back home again.

In order to give the F35s the range they actually needed, they would need to be accompanied by aerial refueling tanker aircraft.

Now the Israeli Air Force possesses several of these kinds of aircraft from the United States, but

the problem is that unlike the F35s, the tankers are big, slow and not stealthy at all, which basically makes them sitting ducks to air defenses in surface to air missiles, even to the more outdated Cold war era systems that Syria had.

This meant that for basically all of modern history, Syria's dense concentration of air defenses eliminated the Israeli Air Force's ability to ever sustain a long range direct attack on Iran.

While its radar systems also provided the Iranians with an early warning system to alert them to any incoming Israeli aerial attack as well.

Now however, with the Assad regime gone, and

with all of Syria's radar and air defenses destroyed and sterilized, Israel has essentially kicked down the gate that was defending Iran against a massive Israeli air assault for decades.

And with their neutralization of Hezbollah, Israel has also eliminated Iran's biggest insurance policy that they had against a massive Israeli aerial assault as well.

Iran now has no credible deterrence to threaten Israel with to discourage them from launching a direct attack, and

they have no capability to prevent the Israeli Air Force from flying directly to their own borders through Syria and Iraq.

It's been estimated by some of the Syrian rebels that it will take decades to recover Syria's lost military capabilities that Israel destroyed during their airstrikes.

Iran itself has very capable air defenses and detection systems on their own territory, but

Israel now has the ability to use Syria as an aerial launching pad towards them.

A fleet of Israeli fighters and tankers could use this opportunity to fly across Syrian airspace to the northeast of the country, where the tankers could then linger in safety while the fighters continue on into Iran to bomb sensitive military and nuclear sites and even centers of the Iranian government.

Then the fighters could return back to northeastern Syria, load up on fuel with the lingering tankers, and

then they could all return safely back to their bases in Israel again.