Over the past four decades, Iran devoted its best military minds, billions of dollars and sophisticated weapons to a grand project — countering U.S. and Israeli power in the Middle East through what it called the “axis of resistance.”The alliance, made up of like-minded armed groups or governments in five Middle Eastern countries, allowed Iran to project power as far west as the Mediterranean and south to the Arabian Sea.But in a breathtakingly short time, it has largely unraveled.Syrian rebel groups ousted the country’s longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in less than two weeks as the government’s military forces put up...