The leaning axis: Iranian proxies are bent but not broken after U.S.-Israeli strikes

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“The resistance front's shocks against the Zionist regime will continue until this 'cancerous tumor' is eradicated from the world map,” declared Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on Oct. 17, 2023 — ten days after Palestinian terrorists crossed over from Gaza into Israel, triggering a retaliatory assault by the Jewish state. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei added: “No one can confront Muslims and the resistance forces if the Zionist regime's (Israel) crimes against Palestinians continue.”

At the time, experts were drawing up scenarios in which thousands of fighters from Iran’s “axis of resistance” would launch multi-front incursions into Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq did, in fact, target Israel with rocket and drone attacks. The Houthis even managed to disrupt shipping through the Red Sea. Iran itself also exchanged missile fire with Israel. But the rumored threat of a full-scale invasion ultimately remained just that — a rumored threat.

In mid-June 2025, when Israel announced the start of a military operation aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, none of the “axis” members stepped in to support Tehran. Although the Houthis made several attempts to attack Israel, their sporadic launches of one or two missiles had long become routine for the Jewish state’s air defenses and offered no real help to the Iranian regime.

Who are Iran’s proxies

Iran’s proxy-building strategy has been in the making for as long as the Islamic Republic has existed. Initially, it involved only Shia groups and movements.

The first was the “Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain,” which attempted to stage a coup in the kingdom in 1981. The group was based in Iran for years and enjoyed the financial support of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Its goal was to spark an “uprising of all Muslims under the leadership of Imam Khomeini” — the ideologue of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the republic’s first Supreme Leader. But the coup in Bahrain failed, and the Front was disbanded in 2002. Still, to this day, Bahraini authorities periodically accuse Tehran of trying to destabilize their country, where a Sunni royal family rules over a population that is majority Shia.

The next — and, notably, far more successful — venture was Hezbollah, which was formed in the early 1980s during Lebanon’s civil war. The group’s Lebanese Shia leaders received patronage from Tehran, and over time, the group evolved into the main strike force in Iran’s ongoing confrontation with Israel.

These efforts expanded in the late 1990s, when Qassem Soleimani was appointed commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, the unit responsible for conducting operations outside Iran. Soleimani is credited with transforming the proxy strategy — not simply as a means of exporting the Islamic Revolution, but as a central tool of Iranian geopolitical influence.

The strategy involved creating new foreign organizations while supporting those that already existed. With Soleimani’s help, the Hezbollah movement rapidly expanded its influence in Lebanon, ultimately becoming a state within a state. Although Hezbollah suffered significant losses in its 2006 war with Israel, Iranian backing helped the group recover relatively quickly.

In 2011, at Iran’s request, the Lebanese Shia movement sent its fighters into neighboring Syria to help the regime of Bashar al-Assad fight off rebel forces in the early days of the country’s civil war. In addition, Soleimani is widely credited with playing a decisive role in persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to deploy Russian troops to Syria in 2015.

Over more than a decade, Hezbollah — along with other Shia groups from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — not only served as defenders of the Syrian government but also as a key instrument of Iranian influence in the country. The IRGC dispatched its own military advisers and specialists to Syria, but Iran’s proxies carried out most of the actual combat operations.

Iran’s ties with Iraqi militias date back to the 1980s, when the Islamic Republic found itself at war with Saddam Hussein’s secular regime. Even after the fighting ended in 1988, many Iraqi opposition groups — especially Shia ones like the Badr Corps — continued to seek refuge in Iran. Only after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 did these groups return to Iraq, where they actively joined the struggle for power — with some focusing on driving the United States out of the country. Political, financial, and military support for these forces flowed from Iran.

It took years for the new authorities in Baghdad to establish even a fragile balance between American dominance, Iranian influence, and the interests of neighboring Arab states. These divergent interest groups united briefly in the struggle against the Islamic State, which gained a foothold in Iraq and Syria starting from 2013. In 2014, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) was formed, an umbrella organization encompassing dozens of armed groups, most of them Shia.

However, once the threat from Islamic State receded, the main PMF factions resumed their confrontation with the United States on Iraqi and Syrian soil while also assisting the governments of both countries in cracking down on dissent. In effect, the PMF began to play a role in Iraq similar to that of Hezbollah in Syria — especially since its status was officially recognized by Baghdad. Fighters from the armed groups began receiving government salaries and were formally acknowledged as being part of the Iraqi army.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the largely independent Houthi movement Ansar Allah was consolidating its hold over the capital city, Sana’a, along with large swathes of the broader country. Still, Tehran supplied the Houthis with weapons while also providing them the technology and materials necessary to produce missiles and drones. In addition, Ansar Allah fighters received training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon. At present, the Houthis are the only Iranian-aligned proxy still actively fighting Israel at anywhere near full strength (given the decimation of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since October 2023).

Palestinian militant groups are something of an exception among Iran’s proxies. They are not Shia and trace their roots to Sunni extremist movements such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. But their shared struggle against Israel brought them into alliance with the ayatollahs’ regime. Although relations between Hamas and Tehran cooled after the Palestinian group declined to fight for Assad in 2011, the rift proved temporary.

Is the “axis” broken?

According to reports in Israeli and American media citing intelligence sources, Iran and Hezbollah were aware of Hamas’s plans to attack Israel but did not agree to participate in the operation. It remains unclear whether Hamas even coordinated the date of its assault with its regional allies. Officially, Iran denies having had any prior knowledge of the attack.

Hezbollah joined Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023 but proceeded cautiously, gradually increasing the number of rocket launches aimed at Israel. The Houthis entered the fray 11 days later. On Oct. 19, they attempted their first strike against Israeli territory. A month later, they began targeting ships in the Red Sea, disrupting maritime traffic through the Red Sea.

Iran itself remained on the sidelines at first, even if Tehran faced accusations from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority that it was fueling escalations in the West Bank and in the Hashemite Kingdom by smuggling weapons to Palestinian groups via Syria. However, Iran openly got involved in 2024, launching two missile strikes against Israeli territory.

The first, in the spring, came in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed several senior IRGC officers at a building in Damascus that was affiliated with the Iranian embassy. The second occurred on Oct. 1 and came in response to two assassinations — that of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh during his visit to Tehran on July 31, and of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on September 27.

Sheikh Nasrallah was killed during an Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah. Throughout two months of intense fighting, the Israeli army carried out airstrikes and deployed hybrid tactics — including detonating pager devices — before ultimately sending ground forces into Lebanese territory. Hezbollah’s resources were severely depleted. In addition to its long-serving secretary general, the group lost numerous senior figures from its military and political leadership. Hezbollah members based in Syria were also hit during the course of the campaign.

One of the key consequences of the weakening of the Lebanese Shia movement and the depletion of its military capabilities was the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus. Iran lost Syria — and with it, the ability to directly support Hezbollah in Lebanon. Adding to the blow, Beirut, with backing from the United States and Saudi Arabia, elected a new president and prime minister who expressed their readiness to bring Hezbollah’s weapons under state control — even if attempting to do so runs the risk of igniting a civil war.

Washington is now awaiting Beirut’s response to its proposal for Hezbollah’s disarmament and an end to the conflict with Israel. The offer includes border demarcation and the return of Lebanese prisoners. The Lebanese government is also being pressed to reassert control over all areas of public life — including by cracking down on the parallel economy from which Hezbollah profits.

According to the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour, officials in Beirut are seeking a solution through negotiation and bargaining with all local forces, including Hezbollah, which is demanding security guarantees. The Shia movement is doing everything in its power to survive. At the same time, Iran is trying to help Hezbollah in any way it can — for example, by attempting to funnel millions of dollars in cash through private couriers flying to Lebanon. But that alone is clearly not enough to convince Lebanon’s Shia militants to risk launching a new war.

Meanwhile, internal issues are distracting Iraq’s Shia militias. The country is preparing for elections, and the government in Baghdad has done its best to keep these groups from entering a new war with Israel, lest Iraqi territory become the same kind of battleground that Lebanon has. As a result, there was no one left to come to Iran’s aid.

Nevertheless, after last month’s American-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, Iraqi factions threatened to strike U.S. bases in the region. In the end, however, it was Tehran itself that launched an attack on a U.S. base in Qatar — after first warning Doha, which in turn notified Washington.

True, the war was over very quickly, but that does not mean Tehran has given up on trying to shape events in the region. According to an Israeli concept, Tehran is depicted as the head of an octopus, with its proxies as the tentacles. Its reach still poses a threat, even if some of those tentacles have been amputated.

What comes next

The “axis of resistance” has fragmented, but it has not completely fallen apart. Israel’s military, tellingly, is now reinforcing its border with Jordan in order to block the ongoing smuggling of weapons and cash from Iran to Palestinian groups. Iran and its proxies still have the capacity to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel — or abroad, targeting Jewish organizations. And nearly every week brings new reports of agents recruited by Iran operating within Israel.

The international community has no clear solution to the Houthi problem. The Houthis claim they will halt their attacks when the war in Gaza ends, but such promises are highly unreliable. At any moment, they could once again block the Red Sea. Meanwhile, the war in Gaza grinds on, even as ceasefire negotiations have once again gained momentum. Like Hezbollah, Hamas is doing everything it can to survive in the face of heavy battlefield losses. Even if Hamas loses power in Gaza, its influence in the West Bank is likely to remain significant.

At the same time, the United States and Iran are preparing for a new round of nuclear talks, which were interrupted by the war. If Washington reaches an agreement with Tehran and begins easing sanctions, Iran will, sooner or later, be able to rebuild its networks of regional influence — if only partially.

In the Middle East, people know how to wait: a little time, a bit of money, a lapse in vigilance or control — and suddenly, a sidelined player surges back with a bid for revenge. That’s why there is no reason to believe Iran has abandoned its ambitions. First, however, Tehran needs to regroup internally, lick its wounds, and agree to a temporary compromise or two — likely with the United States, and perhaps with the IAEA as well.

However, if the ayatollahs prove to be intransigent, Iran’s prospects for a rapid recovery will be greatly diminished, and a new round of conflict between Israel and Iran cannot be ruled out. However, even without direct Iranian support, its former proxies can still find patrons if they choose to look. Hamas and other radical groups, for instance, could continue to rely on funding from Islamic charitable organizations scattered across the Middle East, including from those in Turkey.

Moreover, both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda remain active. Although they no longer control significant territorial bases, they still possess resources. As long as there is an enemy whose hatred can fuel their ideology — and boost their fundraising — these terrorist groups will endure.