“The Iranian Empire”: Israel and the Alliance of Minorities, a Paradoxical Stability (5/5)

It seems necessary to dwell for a moment on the insidious game played by Israel, acting as a puppet master, in the context of the geostrategic ambitions of the Iranian Islamic Republic. For half a century, Tel Aviv found in the “alliance of minorities” (Alawites, Christians, Druze, Lebanese Shiites, Kurds) a geopolitical buffer against the Sunni hinterland. The Israeli «periphery doctrine» (1950s-70s) was indeed based on an axiom: ally with minorities to break the Sunni encirclement.

In this context, the Alawite regimes in Damascus — Hafez and then Bashar al-Assad — were declared but predictable enemies; ideologically stable; obsessed with their internal survival; and perfectly dissuadable. Israel preferred a cynical and rational Assad to a nationalist or Islamist Sunni Syria. And the Western world, both the United States and European countries, followed suit with the Hebrew state, purely out of utilitarianism. The henchmen of the Assad regime rendered so many good and loyal services to European intelligence agencies over the past four decades… why get rid of such an accommodating enemy?

And, to add to the ridicule, several decades after the massacres of Homs and Hama, it is only today that these countries salute the demise of an inhumane regime they constantly legitimized, even when it resolutely massacred civilian opponents in 2011 and handed the country over to Daesh by amnestying Islamists, only to then cry wolf… Hezbollah, in Lebanon, eliminated all the leaders of the National Resistance Front to Israel, formed by the left, starting in the 1980s. What the Hebrew state did not do, the pro-Iranian party completed. Until it became a perfect border guard to prevent any Palestinian aspirations from taking root in South Lebanon. In exchange, Israel overlooked the Syrian takeover of Lebanon in 1990 and the conquest of the Lebanese state by Hezbollah starting in 2006. Moreover, it took advantage of the Hamas-Fatah quarrel to weaken the Palestinian internal front…

Maintaining the mimetic rivalry

With the fall of Assad and the arrival of Ahmed al-Sharaa, Israel finds itself facing a geostrategic paradox: in the short term, Iran — whose exaggerated imperialistic hubris, in Zionist logic, it was time to humble — loses its Levantine bridgehead. In the medium term, a recomposed Sunni Syria reappears — with all that this implies in terms of doctrinal, tribal-military, and regional unknowns. It must be understood that Israel has constantly sought to maintain the mimetic rivalry that already exists between the communities of the Levant against a backdrop of existential anxieties. Thus, playing Christians against Sunnis, Sunnis against Shiites, Alawites against Sunnis, according to pure Machiavellian logic… by restoring balances when they are broken. The function of this strategy is obvious: to guarantee the survival of the Hebrew state by exploiting the weaknesses, fears, and contradictions of others, as well as the fragility of the pluralism of Levantine societies. And, consequently, to eliminate any possibility of the emergence of a credible Palestinian resistance and the birth of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state with international legitimacy.

Certainly, the Sharaa regime completely breaks Iranian influence, closes arms routes to Hezbollah, draws closer to Riyadh and Washington; it attempts a «conservative normalization» to exorcise its jihadist past and provides an opportunity to extend the Abraham Accords to Syria with Sunni legitimacy. But for Israel, this recomposition remains ambiguous: a former jihadist group turned state power is less legible than a stable Alawite dictatorship, and a Sunni power can serve as a complement to the Palestinian cause. While dialogue with it to push for peace is necessary, pressure on the regime must be maintained to keep it in a state of fragility and dependence, whether by neutralizing its military capabilities, stirring up factions within minorities, or creating a buffer zone inside Syrian territory.

For Israel, the entire dichotomy lies here: the Iranian Empire is collapsing, but with it, the comfortable logic of the “alliance of minorities.” Tel Aviv loses an “intimate enemy” (whose fall it delayed as much as possible) in Bashar — the “old pair of socks,” to use the phrase of an Israeli official in 2011 regarding the Syrian president — for an unpredictable neighbor, but one that can guarantee lasting peace, provided it is kept under tight Western politico-economic and Israeli military control.

The empire in fragments

What remains for Iran at the end of 2025 is no longer an axis, but the pieces of an imploded star: Bab el-Mandeb and the Houthis, Gaza in ruins and Hamas, an isolated Hezbollah trying desperately to reconstitute itself, an Iraq under control but suffering from internal tensions, and a Syria definitively lost. Even the heart of the empire now groans under the weight of sanctions and shortages.

Tehran's imperial strategy has not disappeared; it has been shattered, partly a victim of its imperialistic hubris, for wanting to play cunningly with those more powerful than itself. Like Saddam after the invasion of Kuwait.

“If he debases himself, I praise him; if he boasts, I humble him“, Machiavelli advised.

The frog who wanted to make herself as big as the ox, wrote La Fontaine.

Darius III was assassinated by his own people after his defeat against Alexander and the fall of the empire.

Will the current Iranian directory suffer the same fate?

Perhaps.

The difference being that Alexander had wept for Darius III.

No one — absolutely no one — will shed tears over the ruins of the vilayet el-faqih.

Read on the same topic

“The Iranian Empire”: Anatomy of a Fall (1/5)

“The Iranian Empire”: In Yemen, the Houthi Gamble (2/5)

“The Iranian Empire”: The Land Corridor and the Ambition of the Levantine Empire (3/5)

“The Iranian Empire”: Iraq, Open Wound; Gaza, Palestinian Depth (4/5)