Iran’s Defensive Policy in Assad’s Syria: Proxy War

After the Arab Spring that started in the Middle East in 2011, a civil war broke out in Syria. Syria has become a proxy war zone due to many global and regional actors intervened in the crisis. The most important regional actor supporting the Bashar al-Assad regime against the opposition in Syria is Iran. Syria, ruled by Bashar al-Assad was Iran's only ally in the region. For this reason, the most important router of the proxy war in Syria has been Iran. The purpose of this article is to explain the reasons why Iran, which supports the reflections of the Arab Spring and changes of authority in other countries, changed its stance after the protests spread to Syria and implemented a proxy war policy in order to protect the Bashar al-Assad regime. The dynamics that enabled Iran-Syria relations to continue at an almost smooth level from 1979 until the end of the Assad regime in December 2024 are included in the article. In this regard, the proxy war implemented by Iran in Syria has been explained. Iran's proxy war policy in Syria has been analyzed based on the arguments of defensive realism.