In recent comments, a former Iranian president has highlighted a critical vulnerability in Iran’s defense strategy: susceptibility to Israeli airstrikes. His remarks also hint at the failure of Iran’s previous attempts to bolster air defenses in neighboring countries as a buffer against Israel. His assessment is strikingly accurate on both fronts.
Earlier this month, Hassan Rouhani, who once led Iran, remarked, “The skies over Iran have become completely safe for the enemy. We no longer have real deterrence. Our neighboring countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan – all have airspace controlled by the United States and Israel.” This statement underscores Iran’s strategic disadvantage in regional airspace control.
Rouhani, who has an extensive background in air defense, served as the commander of Iranian air defenses from 1985 to 1991. This was during a tumultuous period marked by Iran’s prolonged war with Iraq under Saddam Hussein. His presidential terms from 2013 to 2021 saw Iran developing indigenous air defense systems like the Bavar-373 and Khordad-15. During his leadership, Iran also attempted to establish air defenses in neighboring regions to counterbalance Israel’s air capabilities.
The challenge was underscored during the 12-day conflict in June, where the Israeli Air Force effectively dominated Iranian airspace. This dominance was not solely due to Israel’s superior airpower; it was also facilitated by the prior destruction of some of Iran’s most sophisticated air defenses. Additionally, Israel’s strategic use of Syrian and Iraqi airspace, which presented little resistance, played a significant role.
Rouhani’s presidency concluded in 2021, at a time when Iran’s network of regional militias, known as the Axis of Resistance, was arguably more influential than it is today. Despite the substantial blow dealt by the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, the Iraqi militias, part of this network, continued to wield significant military and political influence in the region, particularly in Iran’s western neighbor, Iraq.
Rouhani’s second term ended in 2021. At that time, the self-styled Axis of Resistance network of Iran-backed militias across the Middle East was in a much stronger position than today.
While the January 2020 U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani—who headed Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps paramilitary’s extraterritorial Quds Force, which organized the various regional Axis militias—was undoubtedly a significant setback, the Iraqi factions still held substantial military and political power in Iran’s western neighbor.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad remained in power and seemed to have prevailed over the ragtag rebel opposition against him after a decade of bloody civil war. His most powerful opponents, the armed Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, only controlled the far-flung northwestern Idlib province. Assad could sit comfortably with his continued backing from Iran and Russia and keep HTS contained in and confined to that border enclave.
And the crown jewel of Iran’s axis, Hezbollah in Lebanon, was still headed by longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. It had steadily amassed an increasingly sophisticated stockpile of up to 150,000 surface-to-surface missiles and rockets that could theoretically overwhelm Israel’s sophisticated, multi-layered air defenses and saturate its cities and military bases with deadly projectiles.
Still, Israel sustained a campaign of targeted airstrikes beginning in 2013 aimed at preventing Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria. While the Israeli Air Force did not bomb Lebanon in those years, even though it frequently violated its airspace, it routinely targeted Iranian elements in Syria, aiming to prevent Tehran from transferring advanced weapons systems overland to Hezbollah.
Syria’s air defenses invariably proved inadequate against the Israeli Air Force. While one Israeli F-16 crashed evading one of Syria’s Soviet-era long-range S-200 missiles in 2018, that was the sole exception. During the same period, Israel destroyed large parts of Syria’s overall air defense and a Russian-built Tor system Iran attempted to set up at a strategic Syrian airbase.
A strategic, long-range S-300 PMU-2 air defense missile system, transferred to Syria by Russia later that year, was ostensibly intended to modernize Syria’s air defense. However, they were always Syrian in name only. After all, Russian military personnel always controlled them—they never made anything more than a symbolic effort to hinder Israel’s air campaign, which became crystal clear when Russia pulled it out of the country following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Syria’s most advanced systems consisted of Russian-built medium-range Pantsir-S1 and Buk-M2 systems. In 2021, Russia backed Syria’s claims that these systems were effective at shooting down standoff munitions fired by Israeli jets from a distance. Either way, they never shot down a single Israeli warplane.
Israel’s ability to strike the assets of the IRGC and its proxies in Syria at will was a weak spot for Iran. Consequently, in July 2020, Tehran signed an agreement with its client in Damascus for deploying two air defense systems to Syria. Iranian state-run media described the agreement at the time as a bid to “change the rules of engagement in Syrian airspace and to respond to repeated Israeli raids on Syrian soil.”
In February 2023, Iranian media reported on the high likelihood of supplying Iranian radars and defense systems, such as the Khordad-15, to strengthen allied Syrian defenses. And there were indications that Tehran at least attempted to do so. February 2023 was the month of a large earthquake that devastated large parts of Syria and neighboring Turkey. Several countries sent relief flights to help Syrians cope with that humanitarian catastrophe, including Iran. Reuters subsequently reported that Iran had used its relief flights to smuggle radar batteries and spare parts for upgrading Syrian air defenses.
Still, it seemed Iran never got to realize its grand plans for upgrading its client’s air defense. On Oct. 7, 2023, Iran-allied Hamas in the Gaza Strip launched its fateful attacks against Israel, the bloodiest and deadliest attack Israel endured in its entire history. Israel responded by unleashing the most utterly devastating war Hamas and Gaza’s civilians ever endured. The wider war launched in retaliation for Oct. 7 would also see Israel inflict incremental strategic blows against the Iran-backed Axis and ultimately bomb Iran itself.
Israel’s multi-front war gradually saw it strike the Axis and the Hamas leadership regardless of their location. It proved its ability to strike Tehran with impunity in the July 2024 assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Most recently, it hit Qatar’s capital Doha with air-launched ballistic missiles in a failed bid to assassinate other high-ranking members of the Hamas political leadership on Sept. 9, 2025. It also targeted Iran’s other ally, the Houthis in Yemen, in several long-range airstrikes, which, in retrospect, were clear practice runs for the 12-day war.
Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in his bunker in Beirut on Sept. 27, 2024, following the rigged explosive pager operation against several Hezbollah operatives. Earlier that same month, Israeli commandos raided an underground mountainous base Iran had established for manufacturing long-range, precision-guided missiles for Hezbollah and Assad’s forces locally. On top of all that, Israel’s devastating air campaign in Lebanon destroyed large parts of Hezbollah’s vast surface-to-surface stockpiles. The doomsday scenario of thousands of projectiles raining down on Israel never materialized to an extent that astonished many in the Israeli intelligence and military establishment.
For example, in a PBS Frontline documentary on Israel’s confrontation with Iran, Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli military intelligence, declared that if someone had told him as recently as 2022 that Israel would not only assassinate Nasrallah, but manage to do so without incurring a single Hezbollah missile fired at Tel Aviv, he would have asked, “What have you drunk? What have you smoked?”
Incidentally, Hezbollah did fire a single ballistic missile at Tel Aviv, which Israel intercepted.
Iran did retaliate directly for the killings of Nasrallah and Haniyeh with a large-scale ballistic missile bombardment against Israel on Oct. 1, 2024. Israel retaliated on Oct. 27 with one night of devastating airstrikes that likely eliminated most of Iran’s strategic Russian S-300 missile systems, leaving the country exposed for future strikes.
In another setback for Iran, Hezbollah’s setback and Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine saw Hayat Tahrir al-Sham burst out of its Idlib enclave in November 2024, swiftly overrunning Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and marching toward Damascus. The IRGC and Hezbollah, which decisively propped up Assad through their 2013 intervention in the civil war, promptly withdrew. Russia, which mounted the most decisive military intervention on his side in 2015, granted Assad, who fled on Dec. 8, asylum. Moscow quickly changed its tone on the now-victorious HTS in a bid to retain its two strategic coastal bases and other interests in the emergent new Syria. Syria’s new leadership promptly banned the IRGC and Hezbollah from the country, severing a vital Levantine link in the Axis.
Israel immediately exploited this political transition to destroy the remnants of Syria’s military stockpile, including all of its air defenses. It undoubtedly destroyed those Pantsir and Buk systems that may have previously downed some Israeli standoff munitions. Ditto for any components Iran managed to smuggle in to upgrade those Assad-era air defenses.
Syria’s air defenses were now entirely out of the picture. Israel had an unprecedented degree of air superiority over Syria and Lebanon. And remember, it had already eliminated some of Tehran’s most advanced air defenses in Iran during the Oct. 27 strikes.
Syria wasn’t the only country to which Iran attempted to supply air defenses to deter or target Israeli aircraft. Evidence suggested it had provided Hezbollah with some limited surface-to-air capabilities that could have theoretically threatened Israeli jets. And while it would have been foolish to dismiss such capabilities outright, they ultimately failed to hinder Israel’s game-changing Autumn 2024 offensive even slightly. Interestingly, out of all Iran’s militia allies and proxies, it was the Houthis’ limited air defenses that proved the most underestimated. A U.S. fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II stealth jet even came under close fire from Houthi surface-to-air missiles during Operation Rough Rider in early 2025.
Aside from seeking to give Assad and Hezbollah capabilities to shield Syrian and Lebanese skies from Israeli warplanes, Tehran seemed to have a similar project in mind for its more immediate neighbor.
In 2019, Iran openly expressed its willingness to help Iraq develop its air defense to shield both countries from mutual “air threats” from the west, undoubtedly a reference to the U.S. and Israel. The U.S.-led multinational coalition destroyed much of Iraq’s air defenses in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Iraq did not acquire new ground-based air defenses for decades. Iraq acquired some Pantsir-S1s from Russia in the 2010s. Its American-made F-16 fighters delivered in the same decade only have medium-range AIM-7M Sparrow air-to-air missiles. Such weapons would likely constitute only a minimal threat to Israeli fighters if Baghdad made the political decision to target them inside its airspace. There are no indications that Iraqi air defenses fired at Israeli jets traversing its airspace throughout the 12-day war. Baghdad formally complained of an overflight of 50 Israeli fighters in just one day.
While Iraq considered buying advanced Russian S-400s in the 2010s, there’s no indication that it seriously considered Iran’s proposal. Baghdad expects to begin receiving the medium-range KM-SAM missile systems it recently ordered from South Korea in early 2026. It’s Iraq’s most significant air defense acquisition in decades and could, again theoretically, pose a much greater threat to Israeli warplanes than the Pantsir-S1s or Sparrow-armed F-16s. Nevertheless, analysts argue it is “politically symbolic.” Iraq may one day use these systems purely for self-defense. Either way, Iran cannot reasonably depend on them to serve as an air defense bulwark against the Israeli Air Force in future conflicts—and that’s presuming they are delivered and enter service before another Israeli air campaign. In an all-out war scenario with Israel or the U.S., or both, Iran may attempt to commandeer them through its powerful armed Iraqi proxies. These groups remain the only Axis forces not targeted by Israel on Iraqi soil in the post-October 2023 conflicts—at least for now. However, such a risky move could result in the rapid destruction of Iraq’s KM-SAMs in the kind of preemptive airstrikes that Israel has shown an unprecedented willingness to conduct against its adversaries over the past two years.
Iran has dubiously claimed it has restored much of its air defense capabilities since the 12-day war. That’s not likely, especially when it comes to replacing imported systems such as the S-300. Tehran has seemingly concluded that another Israeli air war over Iran is inevitable in the near future and is now focusing its efforts on churning out large numbers of ballistic missiles. Iranian officials warn that Tehran aims to attain the capacity to launch 2,000 of them in a single attack against Israel. Of course, the feasibility of executing an attack on such a wholly unprecedented scale remains to be seen.
What has become abundantly clear, and as former President Rouhani acknowledged, is that Iran’s attempts to shape the region’s air defenses as an additional shield against Israeli airstrikes have ended in utter failure.
