It seems odd that the great mass of “anti-imperialist” students and scholars are so unenthusiastic about having a real-world example to point to. Nonetheless, the end of the Assad rule in Syria, whatever else it may also mean, signifies the textbook dissolution of an empire whose time has come and gone.

That empire is, of course, Iran’s.

The Iranian government itself may not fall. The end of the Russian Empire did not result in the disappearance of Russia, and the same is true of most empires. But Iran’s empire is crumbling.

It is appropriate, then, that it appears to be ending where it began: in Syria.

The Iran-Iraq War that consumed most of the 1980s reshaped political alliances in odd ways, one of which was that Baathist Syria aligned itself against Baathist Iraq and with non-Arab Iran.

Iran expanded into Lebanon by helping to launch Hezbollah. This proved to be the most advantageous of any of its investments. Born of chaos and opportunism, Hezbollah was Iran’s successful effort to organize Lebanon’s disparate militias under one umbrella, while gaining Tehran a Mediterranean outlet.

Soon the Lebanon and Syria branches of this imperial tree would start to benefit each other. Iran used Syria to transfer arms and other terrorism supplies to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah’s leadership helped guide Bashar al-Assad when he succeeded his father, Hafez, as president of Syria at the young age of 34.

In the late 1980s, Iran was also an “angel investor,” so to speak, in Hamas. “Since its formation in late 1987, Hamas has received and continues to receive significant financial and other support from Iran,” writes Matthew Levitt, counterterrorism program director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “By 1994, Palestinian author-turned-legislator Ziad Abu-Amr wrote that Iran ‘provides logistical support to Hamas and military training to its members,’ estimating Iranian assistance to Hamas ‘at tens of millions of dollars.’ Over time, this figure would rise steadily.”

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was an important source of funding and training for Hamas. After Hussein’s fall, Iran stepped in to fill the void left by its old rival. Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader based until 2012 in Syria, played a key role in increasing Iran’s operational control over the Palestinian terror group.

It was the Syrian civil war that ultimately drove Meshaal to flee Damascus. That war also began draining Iranian blood and treasure and put a demanding strain on Hezbollah. Nevertheless, with Russian help, Tehran made sure to protect Assad’s rule. By then, imperial Iran had established a strong foothold in Iraq and helped its Houthi proxy in Yemen begin the campaign that would result in the taking of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, proved to be the beginning of the end of this alliance. Hamas refused to surrender and return all the hostages, drawing out the resulting war and giving Israel a chance to bring Hamas to its knees and eliminate its leadership. Iran’s decision to have Hezbollah join the fight gave Israel the opportunity to do the same up north. That drew Iran itself further into the shooting war, and Israel’s retaliatory strikes greatly weakened Iran’s military capabilities—and, thus, its ability to keep afloat Hezbollah, Hamas, and Assad. Hezbollah and Hamas are shells of their former selves, and Assad fled Syria last night, officially breaking up Iran’s land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea.

All of this argues for the celebration of Assad’s fall, even though we don’t yet know what will replace it and the rebel factions contain within them Islamist terrorists and al-Qaeda offshoots. Every expansion of Iranian imperial ambitions brought with it not just increased violence but the underwriting of a shocking level of barbarism. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran’s main contribution to the region has been to drain the humanity of everything it touches. Its colonies are agents of bloodletting and the worst crimes against humanity imaginable.

Imperial Iran’s chief export is degradation, and its expansion pulls the world ever deeper into its campaign of terror—most recently, it has joined Russia’s war to obliterate Ukraine. It is a corrupting force that recognizes no limits. It is an evil empire, and it is fading as such because society’s immune system is still strong enough to fight back.

Put simply, Assad had to fall. And Iran has to go back to being just Iran. The former has now happened, and the latter is well on its way.