A chain of betrayals in the Axis of Resistance

Hamas’s betrayal of Assad

Friedman begins with the first betrayal in the chain, which he says occurred during the Syrian civil war. After the Hamas leadership moved to Damascus in 1999 and received generous hospitality from Bashar al-Assad’s regime, it decided to stab him in the back. In 2012, against the backdrop of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia and a sense that Assad was about to fall, Hamas chose to support the Syrian opposition. Friedman explains that Assad never forgave Hamas for this. Even when Hezbollah tried to arrange a reconciliation years later, Assad agreed to meet with Hamas representatives but adamantly refused to meet Khaled Mashal, who headed the organization’s political bureau at the time of the betrayal.

Hamas’s sense of betrayal after October 7

According to Friedman, Hamas was never a natural member of the Shiite Axis of Resistance, as it is a Sunni organization. Nevertheless, its leadership took Iranian propaganda and Nasrallah’s declarations about the destruction of Israel seriously. Hamas expected that when it launched its attack on October 7, all members of the axis would join it in an all-out war. The expectation was that Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and Israeli Arabs would also join the struggle, similar to the events of “Guardian of the Walls” (called “Sword of Jerusalem” in Arabic).

However, none of this happened. Hamas found itself alone in the war. Hezbollah did join the next day, but it limited itself to a low-intensity war of attrition and did not open a full front. The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack and called it a crazy adventure. The Arab world, including Egypt and Jordan, stood aside. Egypt even blocked the Rafah crossing, and Jordan prevented marches from reaching the border with Israel. From Hamas’s point of view, everyone betrayed it.

The betrayal of Hezbollah

Hezbollah, too, experienced betrayal, Friedman argues. After months of low-intensity fighting, Israel launched a large-scale offensive in September 2024 that destroyed the organization’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah expected its patron, Iran, to intervene on its behalf, or at least that the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen would come to its aid as they had promised. This did not happen.

Friedman also adds the Assad regime to the list of betrayers, in whose territory not a single demonstration for Gaza was held. The only demonstrations in Syria took place in rebel-held areas, such as Idlib. This may have been Assad’s revenge on Hamas, he says.

In addition, Hezbollah felt betrayed by the broader Shiite world. The organization hoped that the supreme religious authority in the Shiite world, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq, would issue a religious edict (fatwa) calling for jihad against Israel. Such an edict never came. Friedman explains that this reflects the gap between the militant and vengeful Shiism of Iran and the more defensive and traditional Shiism of Najaf, represented by Sistani.

The betrayal of Iran

The final link in the chain is Iran itself. When Israel attacked its territory directly, the militias that Iran had nurtured and invested billions in for decades did not come to its aid. From the Iranian perspective, Friedman explains, this is a clear betrayal, similar to the rules of loyalty in the world of organized crime.

Iran was betrayed not only by its proxies, but also by its major allies. Russia, to whose war in Ukraine Iran supplied thousands of drones, refused to transfer advanced S-400 air defense systems to it. Friedman notes that even before that, Russia had allowed Israel to attack Iranian targets in Syria. China, too, betrayed Iran, he says, when it signed a huge trade deal with the United States immediately after the round of fighting between Israel and Iran ended.

Loyalty on the other side

Friedman notes that the phenomenon of a lack of coordination and mutual betrayals on the Arab side is not new, and he mentions the 1948 War of Independence as an example. He argues that it is important to understand the failures on the other side and not to attribute all the success solely to the IDF’s capabilities.

In contrast to the chain of betrayals in the Iranian axis, Friedman points to the loyalty shown by Israel’s allies. He highlights the role of the United States, whose current and former presidents have stood by Israel in words and deeds. Likewise, Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan maintained their peace agreements, and Jordan even helped intercept Iranian missiles. The fact that Israeli fighter jets could pass through the airspace of Arab countries on their way to attack Iran, he says, sums up the picture.