A diminished Hezbollah is made even weaker by the toppling of Assad in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — A severely hobbled Hezbollah was in no position to help defend former Syrian President Bashar Assad, a longtime ally, from the lightning-fast insurgency that toppled him. With Assad gone, the militant group based in Lebanon is even weaker.

Hezbollah was dealt a major blow during 14 months of war with Israel. The toppling of Assad, who had strong ties to Iran, has now crippled its ability to bounce back by cutting off a vital weapons-smuggling route through Syria.

Hezbollah officials are deeply concerned but defiant.

“What is happening in Syria is a major, dangerous and new change, and to know why this happened needs evaluation,” Hassan Fadlallah, a Lebanese lawmaker who represents Hezbollah's political wing, said during a speech at a funeral for militants killed by Israel. “Whatever is happening in Syria, despite its dangers, will not weaken us.”

Analysts say the diminishment of Hezbollah will have big consequences for Lebanon, where for decades it has been a major political player — and for Iran, which has relied on the group as one of several proxy forces projecting power across the Middle East. It is also a game-changer for Israel, whose nemesis on its northern border is now at its most vulnerable point in decades.

The Assad dynasty, which ruled Syria for half a century with an iron fist, played a crucial role in empowering Hezbollah, which was founded in the early 1980s by Iranian advisers who came through Syria. In addition to being a conduit for Iranian weapons, Syria also was a place where Hezbollah trained fighters and manufactured its own weapons.

As Hezbollah grew more powerful, it became a force Assad could rely on for protection in times of crisis. Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters to bolster Assad's forces when a civil war broke out in 2011.

As insurgents swept across Syria in early December and took the city of Homs — a stone’s throw from a Syrian border town where Hezbollah had a presence — many expected the militants to put up a fierce fight. After all, they did just that in 2013, preventing Assad's opponents from advancing into Damascus.

This time, Hezbollah was in disarray. Many of its top officials, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, were killed in Israeli airstrikes. And months of Israeli bombardment destroyed much of its military infrastructure. With Syria's key international allies, Russia and Iran, on the sidelines, Hezbollah withdrew, and Assad was ousted quickly.

“The fall of the regime marks the end of Iran’s arms in Syria and Lebanon,” said Lt. Col. Fares al-Bayoush, a Syrian army defector who fought in the civil war against Assad's forces and Hezbollah until 2017, when he moved to Turkey.

In Lebanon, the sapping of Hezbollah's strength has given the army the opportunity to reassert control it had ceded, especially along its southern border. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire between the militant group and Israel states that Hezbollah should have no armed presence along that border and it has led to growing calls within Lebanon for the group's disarmament.

“To Hezbollah, it’s game over,” Samir Geagea, who leads the Christian Lebanese Forces Party, said in a statement on Sunday, hours after insurgents took Damascus. “Sit with the Lebanese military to end your status as an armed group, and transform yourselves into a political party.”

But Hezbollah’s longtime sway in the political arena in Lebanon also faces a major challenge.

Many in Lebanon are angry with the group. Critics say Hezbollah violated its promise to use its weapons only to defend Lebanon when it began firing rockets into Israel last year, the day after Hamas — another Iranian-backed group — attacked Israel.

Nearly than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon during the war with Israel, according to the country's health ministry. Entire towns and villages where Hezbollah militants and their supporters lived have been flattened. More than 1 million people have been displaced, and the country's economy — which was in bad shape before the war — is in a deep hole.

“With the (Syrian) regime gone, Hezbollah in Lebanon faces an entirely new reality,” said Firas Maksad, of the Middle East Institute.

Maksad said many Lebanese leaders have yet to grasp the magnitude of the change that has taken place. Even some onetime allies of Hezbollah in parliament have begun distancing themselves from the group.

Gebran Bassil, a lawmaker who represents the Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon’s other major Christian party, said Hezbollah's loss of a weapons pipeline from Iran could help Lebanon extract itself from regional conflict.

“Hezbollah should focus on internal affairs and not the wider region,” Bassil, a former ally of Hezbollah, said.

It may have no choice but to narrow its ambitions. With the fall of Assad, Iran has lost control of a corridor of land that stretched through Iraq and Syria all the way to the Mediterranean, and which gave it an unimpeded route to supply Hezbollah.

“They can maybe fly in some things and smuggle some things, but that’s not gonna be on the same scale, not even close," said Aron Lund, a Syria expert with Century International, a New York-based think tank.

For Israel, breaking Iran’s regional network has been a major goal, though it is wary over Islamic militants among the insurgents who toppled Assad. Israel on Sunday moved troops into a demilitarized buffer zone with Syria by the Israel-held Golan Heights in what it called a temporary security measure.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Assad’s fall a “historic day,” saying it was “the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad’s main supporters.”

FILE - People check a building damaged by an Israeli airstrike in Choueifat, Lebanon, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah fighters attend the funeral procession of a Hezbollah militant who was killed by Israeli shelling, in south Lebanon, Oct. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

FILE - Flames and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

FILE - Fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah train in southern Lebanon, May 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

FILE - A woman lights candles at the site where former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Hezbollah fighters carry a coffin during a funeral procession in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

FILE - A man carries a Hezbollah flag as he walks on the rubble of his destroyed apartment following an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Nizam Abazid is gleefully planning his first trip in decades to Syria, where he grew up. Rama Alhoussaini was only 6 years old when her family moved to the U.S., but she's excited about the prospect of introducing her three kids to relatives they've never met in person.

They are among thousands of Detroit-area Syrian Americans who are celebrating the unexpected overthrow of the Syrian government, which crushed dissent and imprisoned political enemies with impunity during the more than 50-year reign of ousted President Bashar Assad and his father before him.

“As of Saturday night, the Assad regime is no longer in power,” Alhoussaini, 31, said through tears Tuesday at one of the Detroit-area school and day care facilities her family operates. “And it’s such a surreal moment to even say that out loud, because I never thought that I would see this day.”

It may be some time before either visits Syria. Though happy to see Assad go, many Western countries are waiting for the dust to settle before committing to a Syria strategy, including whether it’s safe for the millions who fled the country’s civil war to return.

Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led the insurgency that toppled Assad after an astonishing advance that took less than two weeks, has disavowed his group's former ties to al-Qaida and cast himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. But the U.S. still labels him a terrorist and warns against any travel to Syria, where the U.S. hasn't had an embassy since 2012, the year after the war started.

But for Syrians in the U.S. who have been unable to visit, the overthrow of the Assad government has given them hope that they can safely return, either for good or to visit.

“The end of the regime is the hope for all the Syrian people,” Abazid said this week, days after Assad and his family fled to Russia.

Abazid said he could go to Syria whenever, since he holds dual U.S. and Syrian citizenship, but that he'll wait a few months for things there to settle down.

Although European leaders have said it's not safe enough yet to allow war-displaced refugees to return to Syria, Abazid said he and his brother aren't concerned.

“When Assad’s forces were in power, my fate would’ve been in jail or beheaded,” Abazid said. “But now, I will not be worried about that anymore.”

Many Syrians who immigrated to the U.S. settled in the Detroit area. Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans of any state and is home to the country's largest Arab-majority city, Dearborn. It also has more than 310,000 residents who are of Middle Eastern or North African descent.

As rebel forces seized control of Syria, capping a lightning-quick advance that few thought possible even a month ago, Syrians in and around Detroit — like their counterparts all over the world — followed along in disbelief as reports poured in about one city after another slipping from Assad's grip. When news broke that Assad's government had fallen, celebrations erupted.

Abazid, who owns a cellphone business in Dearborn, was born in Daraa, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of the Syrian capital, Damascus. He moved to the U.S. in 1984 at age 18, and although he's gone back a few times, he hasn't visited since 1998 because of what he described as “harassment” by Syrian intelligence. That trip had to be heavily coordinated with U.S. authorities, as he said Syrian authorities took him into custody and detained him for more than six months during a 1990 visit.

“When I was kidnapped from the airport, my family didn’t even know ... what it was about," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I still don’t know the reason. I have no idea why I was kidnapped.”

Abazid, 59, said his parents have died since that 1998 trip, but his five sisters still live in Syria. Each of his four brothers left Syria during the 1970s and 1980s, including one who hasn't been back since emigrating 53 years ago, shortly after Bashar Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, rose to power.

Alhoussaini, who lives in West Bloomfield Township, said she was born in Damascus and moved to the Detroit area as a young girl, “mainly because there was nothing left for us in Syria.”

She said under the Assad family's rule, her grandfather's land was taken. Authorities detained him for almost a month. Her father was also detained before the family left.

“There never needed to be a reason,” Alhoussaini said. "My dad was able to return one time, in 2010. And he has not been able to go back to his home country since, mainly because we spoke up against the Assad regime when the revolution started in 2011. And we attended many protests here. We were vocal on social media about it, did many interviews.”

But with Bashar Assad gone and Syria in the hands of the rebels, “We don’t have to be afraid anymore to visit our country,” she said.

Her father, 61, is considering making a trip to Syria to see his siblings and visit his parents' graves. Alhoussaini said she and her husband, who is from the northern city of Aleppo, want to take their kids over to visit with family and friends.

Alhoussaini’s three sisters, ages 40, 34 and 29, were also born in Syria. But none of them have been back.

Now, there is hope and amazement that people in Syria can celebrate in the streets, she said.

Alhoussaini said she thinks people who were born and raised in the U.S. won't be able to fully relate, because Americans enjoy a freedom of expression that people in Syria have never had.

“You can say what you want. You can go out into the street and protest whoever you want,” she said. "You will not be detained for it. You will not be killed for it.”

Rama Alhoussaini sits at her desk in Dearborn Heights, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Nizam Abazid sits in his cellular shop in Dearborn, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Rama Alhoussaini stands in her office in Dearborn Heights, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Nizam Abazid sits in his cellular shop in Dearborn, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. Abazid, 59, left Syria in 1984. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Rama Alhoussaini holds a Syrian flag in her Dearborn Heights, Mich., office, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)