Iranian Commander Discusses the State of the Axis of Resistance

A recently leaked speech by a senior Iranian military officer provides a rare and candid look into how Iran is coping with its strategic defeat in Syria and what it will do next. Brigadier General Behrouz Esbati gave the speech to a private gathering of military members and families in Tehran shortly after the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime in December 2024.[i] Esbati, who was deeply involved in Iranian operations in Syria, appeared disappointed and frustrated, telling the audience, “We didn’t just take a hit. . . We lost badly.” Indeed, the fall of Assad deprived Tehran of its main entry point into the Levant and upended many of the core assumptions and ideas that have long underpinned Iranian strategy in the Middle East.[ii] Esbati’s speech reflects the shock that Iranian leaders have thus incurred, especially as they were already reeling from other strategic blows, such as the defeats of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Esbati’s speech is furthermore an important artifact for Western analysts and policymakers to understand how Tehran, in light of these setbacks, will revise its regional strategy and security doctrine moving forward.

Interpreting Esbati’s speech first requires an understanding of his position in the regime and specifically his role in internal messaging. Esbati is a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer and has spent most of his military career involved in cultural and media activities. He currently commands the Cyberspace Headquarters under the Armed Forces General Staff’s department for culture and defense propaganda. Esbati, in this capacity, worked extensively in Syria, where he oversaw information operations and socio-cultural engineering. It is noteworthy in this context that Esbati was the one to deliver a message about the state of the Axis of Resistance to an audience of junior military members in Tehran. He was uniquely positioned to do so given his background managing ideology and morale among service members. It is unclear though whether Esbati gave the speech on his own initiative or at the behest of more senior Iranian leaders.

Esbati, in the speech, expressed frustration with Assad and Russia, blaming them, among others, for the collapse of the regime. Esbati lamented their passivity and came close to accusing them outright of betraying Iran. Esbati concluded that Iran must cultivate a “true” ally in Syria, who—unlike Assad—will be loyal to the Iranian supreme leader. This comment may reflect a key lesson that Tehran has learned from its experience in Syria: that the IRGC must continuously emphasize the ideologization of Axis of Resistance members to ensure their loyalty and subordination to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Esbati suggested in his speech that Assad may still be in power had he listened to Khamenei, raising questions about how the IRGC will approach the ideologization of the remaining members of the Axis of Resistance, such as the Houthis and Iraqi militias, in the years ahead.

Esbati proclaimed that the IRGC is already rebuilding its militia networks in Syria to cultivate a true ally there. This assertion is consistent with CTP and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)'s assessment that Iran is trying to stoke sectarian tensions and fuel armed resistance against the Syrian interim government led by Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS).[iii] Iranian state media has amplified sectarian narratives about Syria regularly in recent weeks.[iv] And senior Iranian officials, including Khamenei, have called several times for unspecified armed groups to mobilize and liberate Syria.[v] CTP-ISW has presented this assessment and these developments in our daily updates that track Iran and its Axis of Resistance across the Middle East. An IRGC officer later downplayed Esbati’s remarks as “aspirational” to Western media, likely in order to obfuscate any Iranian effort along these lines.[vi]

Esbati tried throughout his speech to project confidence about the overall state of the Axis of Resistance despite the defeat in Syria. Esbati, on one hand, broke from official regime rhetoric in discussing Syria, giving an honest assessment of Iranian losses there. His comments on Hamas and Hezbollah, on the other hand, were more consistent with popular regime narratives, which have tried to distort reality by framing the defeats in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon as victories. Esbati, for example, argued that the number of rockets that Hamas has fired is somehow a marker of military success. Though such comments are strange, especially to a military audience, they demonstrate how Esbati was willing to break from the official talking points when discussing Syria and less so when discussing subjects in which he had less personal experience. He ignored the realities that Israel has destroyed Hamas militarily, degraded Hezbollah severely, and compelled both actors to pursue ceasefires, which were tantamount to their surrenders.[vii]

Below is a complete translation of Esbati’s 57-minute-long speech. We are publishing this text to boost awareness of his claims, especially given apparent IRGC efforts to downplay what he said. We are including analytical commentary in brackets and italics to provide further context and nuance.

Read the full translation with commentary: Iranian Commander Discusses the State of the Axis of Resistance