On October 1, by means of a recent agreement, Tehran will officially take over the management of the port at the Syrian city of Latakia, fulfilling the Islamic Republic’s long-held goal of securing access to the Mediterranean. Élie Saïkali writes:

The agreement is a major accomplishment for Tehran, which sees control of the port as an opportunity to strengthen its influence in Syria and the rest of the Middle East. It is also a step forward in the consolidation of the “Shiite axis” linking Iran to the Mediterranean by land. . . . After October 1, the Islamic Republic will be able to use the 23-warehouse harbor for its own purposes. . . .

The port agreement is a sign that Iran’s presence in Syria is still increasing; it followed on the heels of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Tehran on February 25, where he met with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The trip was Assad’s first to his closest regional ally since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, which is now in its ninth year.

In recent months, a number of industrial, military, and energy deals between Tehran and Damascus have been made public, including one that provides for the establishment of power stations in Latakia. The port-management agreement is another building block in Iran’s project to maintain its presence in Syria. The move is bad news for Israel, which may be tempted to carry out airstrikes on the facility if it suspects that it is being used to move suspicious goods.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”