Alantic Council:

Iran’s involvement in Syria's civil war is the Islamic Republic’s first overt foreign policy intervention in the Middle East and its most enduring.

Without fanfare, the Islamic Republic sent members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite Quds Force to other nations, beginning with Lebanon where the Guards helped organize the powerful militia, Hezbollah, in the early 1980s. Iran’s alliance with the Syrian regime, which facilitated Hezbollah’s creation, also dates to these years when Iran found itself internationally isolated, and was engaged in a bloody war with Iraq.

This alliance continues to be vital to Iran’s geopolitical and ideological objectives. Ever since the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011, Iran has thrown its support behind the beleaguered president, Bashad al-Assad. This continuous support reflects Iran’s estimation of the consequences of Assad’s removal as unacceptable for Iran’s own national security.

Syria has been an integral part of the so called Axis of Resistance against Israel and a major conduit for Iran’s material support to Hezbollah. From a purely geopolitical standpoint, Hezbollah provides Iran asymmetric deterrence to check Israel’s power. Iran and Israel are two middle-sized powers which collaborated under the Shah but have competed for influence in the region since the 1979 revolution...

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