Abstract

It is a common view that Iran has emerged as a winner from the war in Syria, especially with the survival of the Assad regime likely for the foreseeable future. Yet this is a pyrrhic victory for Iran: it has been dragged into a costly quagmire with no end in sight. Iran and its allies (Assad, Russia, local and foreign Shia militias) have certainly been lining up tactical victories on the battlefield since 2015, including the recapture of Aleppo in 2016, but these do not amount to winning the war, let alone to stabilizing and rebuilding the country. The Islamic Republic has no choice but to continue pouring resources in Syria at great cost, only to preserve a hollowed out and fragmented Assad regime. This is a classic case of mission creep: Iran intervened lightly at first but got dragged into an ever costlier spiral. Iran – and Russia – in this sense are now responsible for a devastated country ripped apart along sectarian and regional fault lines and which suffers from a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions. Iran’s efforts in Syria have led, in sum, to an excessively costly victory.