With the stunning fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, another branch of Iran’s “axis of resistance” to Israel has been eliminated, a positive development with strategic opportunities for Israel, though there are still risks to the Jewish state, experts told Jewish Insider.

The lightning-quick rebel takeover of Syria came after Israeli military achievements against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the killing of much of both groups’ leadership and the elimination of a significant portion of their military infrastructure over the past year. 

Visiting the border with Syria on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “the Assad regime a central link in the Iranian axis of evil,” and said its downfall was a “direct result of our blows to Iran and Hezbollah, the Assad regime’s main supporters,” which “created a chain reaction throughout the Middle East.” 

Iran’s foreign ministry released a statement saying that “Syria’s future must be decided by its people, free from external interference and imposition. Relations with Syria are expected to persist…based on common interests.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who met with his Syrian counterpart on Friday, was scheduled to speak at the Doha Forum over the weekend but departed Qatar early on Sunday. He is expected to take part in a discussion on the situation in Syria in the Iranian parliament on Monday.

Dina Lisnyansky, an expert on Middle Eastern geopolitics at Shalem College, told Jewish Insider that Iran “invested many years and resources and energy in creating proxies, and one by one they’re falling – Hamas, Hezbollah and now Assad’s Syria. It doesn’t have much left in the region.”

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and the Misgav Institute for National Security, said that taken together, the events have culminated in “the fall of the Iranian axis of evil.” 

“This is a major blow to Hezbollah, worse than what we did to them in recent months,” Kuperwasser told JI. 

Other branches of the Iranian axis, in Iraq and Yemen, will likely be destabilized by Assad’s fall, and “the Iranians will try to tighten ranks,” he said.

Lisnyansky said the events “significantly weaken the Iranian Shiite axis, but that means that Iran will put all of its efforts into going nuclear now that Iran feels weaker, and less defended.”

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi warned over the weekend that Iran’s highly enriched uranium “production capacity is increasing dramatically.”

Kuperwasser noted that Iran took those steps “in response to the weakening of the axis [in war with Israel], when it was not yet falling apart.” Now, he said, “a nuclear Iran is a more immediate and tangible matter.”

According to Lisnyansky, “the goal of the enlightened world must be not to let Iran get a nuclear weapon.”

As for the Syrian rebels themselves, Kuperwasser said that their danger to Israel is “exaggerated.”

“Their first mission is to stabilize Syria, and Israel is not the central question they are addressing,” he said.

In addition, Kuperwasser argued that the “positive achievement of bringing down the Iranian axis overshadows whatever will happen next.”

Lisnyansky explained that the rebels are made up of several groups that are likely to take different approaches to Israel.

The largest and strongest group is the Islamists, known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. The group was once an affiliate of Al-Qaida known as the al-Nusra Front, but it became independent in 2016, while maintaining its radical Islamist ideology.

While Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is supported by Turkey, which has grown increasingly hostile to Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, Lisnyansky said that if Jerusalem and Ankara stabilize relations, then HTS may view “Israel not as a potential enemy but as a potential ally to a new Syria.” 

At the same time, the group is comprised of “heavy Islamists,” Lisnyansky said, noting that she has seen anti-Israel chatter from Syria among “fighters from all around the world who are very radical and say they want to free Syria and then Palestine.” 

Lisnyansky argued that, while Israel should be cautious in considering its next steps, it should act before Qatar steps in.

“We know the Iranian side is getting weaker but the Sunni Salafi side is getting stronger,” she said. “Qatar, the main patron of the Muslim Brotherhood, will get in there. … Before Qatar gets in and invests economically and ideologically, we have to try to create as many connections as possible with all of the factions.” 

Other major rebel groups include secular rebels, who started the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Assad in 2011, Druze in the Syrian Golan, and Kurds on the Syria-Iraq border.

Netanyahu said that Israel has “a policy of being good neighbors,” such as when it established a field hospital on the border for Syrian refugees during the civil war, and that Israel “stretches out a hand of peace to our Druze neighbors … to the Kurds, the Christians and Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel.”

Lisnyansky said that “Israel is now looking at all of these groups that are varied ethnically, politically, socially and culturally to see if we can make arrangements with them. Some of them are already reaching out to Israel. The Druze say they don’t want a war with Israel, they want stability in the region. The Kurds have had ties with Israel the whole time and can cooperate over many shared interests and understandings.”

Kuperwasser saw “positive potential” among the rebel groups that want to be “good neighbors to Israel.”

“Syria as a united body might not exist anymore with everyone pulling in their own directions,” he said. “What happens next is a big question. …There is negative and positive potential. Whether the positive potential is realized depends on [Israel’s] caution and the cleverness with which we act.”

Kuperwasser, in his former capacity as director-general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, played a role in a key moment in the Syrian civil war. He and Yuval Steinitz, the strategic affairs minister at the time, suggested that Russia be responsible for destroying Assad’s chemical weapons, thus giving then-President Barack Obama an off-ramp from attacking Syria after Assad crossed his red line. 

Moscow and Washington adopted the idea, which was effective in its goal of avoiding a larger-scale war while removing much of the chemical weapon threat from Syria. But the move also legitimized Russia’s involvement in Syria, which Moscow took advantage of to prop up Assad and keep Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Israel’s borders.

Kuperwasser said that “in the end, what we did was good, because think what would happen if Syria had a lot of chemical weapons and they fell in the hands of radical Islamists.”

“We didn’t let Russia into Syria, we let the chemical weapons out of Syria. Russia entered Syria because it wanted to save Assad, not just because of chemical weapons,” he said, suggesting that Israel remain cautious as it takes a more active role.

“Israel needs to develop ties and a dialogue with the power players in the new reality in Syria,” he said. “We want to ensure they don’t become a threat to Israel – or clarify that they should not threaten Israel.”

The IDF’s deployed in the buffer zone on Saturday and Sunday to stop rebels from attacking U.N. peacekeepers maintaining the Israel-Syria 1974 cease-fire, and took over the Syrian side of Mount Hermon to make ensure rebels on the mountain cannot threaten Israel. Those actions are already making Israel’s message clear, Kuperwasser said, adding: “We want to make sure there are no misunderstandings.”

Lisnyansky said that military action “makes very clear that no one can pass the ‘74 line … I don’t think that is going to be a problem unless the factions that want to expand Syria will go there. I think, for now, they’re focused on stabilizing their hold on Syria. If Israel is assertive and clear, this will be fine for now.” 

Lisnyansky said that Israel “has to act carefully and consider the internal politics [of Syria] but not sit on the fence. We’ve done enough sitting on the fence. This is the time to be cautiously proactive.” 

Kuperwasser was optimistic that Israel can “have a reasonable relationship with Syria … At the moment, it’s not at the top of their agenda. If we can, we should contribute to stability.”

“Maybe, in the end, we’ll eat hummus in Damascus,” Kuperwasser quipped, referring to a slogan from when Israel and Syria were in secret peace talks in the 1990s.