Tehran is again pushing back on claims that the ouster of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is a major setback for Iran’s geopolitical struggle against the West and its allies.
To oppose its adversaries, specifically the United States and Israel, Tehran for decades built up a so-called Axis of Resistance, an informal Iranian-led coalition of militant groups operating throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Syria, under the helm of Assad, was key to Iran’s ability to project power in the region, and its efforts to hem in Israel.
On Dec. 22, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied that Tehran is directing a network of armed groups across the region.
“They [enemies] consistently say that the Islamic Republic has lost its regional proxies — this is yet another mistake! The Islamic Republic does not have any proxy forces,” Iran’s state-run Press TV quoted Khamenei as saying.
Those forces, he said, “are driven by their beliefs; they fight because of their convictions, not on our behalf.”
Khamenei’s claim that Iran does not have proxy forces is false.
Iran operates or coordinates with more than 100 militant groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and beyond to advance its foreign policy interests.
While the degree of control Iran exercises over members of its axis can vary, Tehran has directly established some of those groups and aided their operations.
In September, the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that, “support for regional nonstate actors has been a pillar of the Iranian government’s foreign policy since the 1979 founding of the Islamic Republic.”
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy estimated in 2019 that more than a hundred different Shiite groups and subgroups, “the primary drivers of Iranian influence,” were operating in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
It found that Iran was “the principal creator and backer of Shia militias throughout the Middle East.”
The Axis of Resistance was cultivated and expanded by Qassem Soleimani, who headed up Iran’s elite Quds Force, an “external operations arm” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism called the Quds Force “Iran’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorist activity abroad.”
Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Soleimani helped create or otherwise support militant groups that would ultimately play a hand in driving out U.S. forces.
Iran provided U.S.-designated terrorist groups in Iraq, including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, with training, funding, logistical support, weapons and operational influence.
The U.S. assassinated Soleimani via drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2020, citing his role in killing American and coalition service members.
Beginning in 2011, Syria’s protracted civil war provided Iran an opportunity to increase its control over the country, which analysts at the United States Institute for Peace called the “frontline against Iran’s archenemy Israel and the linchpin of Tehran’s ability to project power in the Levant.”
They called Syria the main conduit for Iran’s supply of weapons and equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon, “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.”
Tehran’s support, militarily and otherwise, was critical in propping up the Assad regime throughout the conflict.
IRGC funded, supplied and commanded Liwa Fatemiyoun, a Shiite militia composed of Afghan recruits fighting alongside Syrian government forces. The IRGC also formed a group called Liwa Zainebiyoun, composed of Pakistani Shiite militants, to fight in Syria.
An armed Palestinian group, Liwa al-Quds, also fought on behalf of Assad. The Syrian news website Zaman Al Wasl described it as “a Sunni face of [Iran’s] al-Quds battalion.”
Soleimani’s successor, Esmail Ghaani, took the Axis of Resistance to the next level, deploying it on the battlefield in what analysts at the Washington-based Middle East Institute called a “comprehensive and coordinated manner.”
Those efforts culminated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups attacked towns and settlements in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 250 hostages.
Iran has provided Hamas and Islamic Jihad with weapons, funding and training.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, has been instrumental in the decades-long Iran-Israel proxy conflict and the Israel-Lebanon conflict.
A day after the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah began launching missiles into Israel.
The CRS said Hezbollah “most closely represents an Iranian proxy,” noting it “often aligns directly with, and acts on behalf of, Tehran.”
The State Department estimated in 2020 that Iran provides Hezbollah $700 million annually.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2024 significantly diminished Hezbollah’s fighting capability.
The Sept. 27 attack on the Lebanese militant group’s headquarters in Beirut killed a top Quds Force commander, Abbas Nilforushan, alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Not all Iranian proxies coordinate so closely with Tehran. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, say analysts, operate with greater independence. The Shiite militants have launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks on Israel since the beginning of Israel-Hamas war and attacked more than 60 vessels in the Red Sea.
A July 2024 Defense Intelligence Agency report provides what it describes as visual evidence of the Iranian origin of missiles smuggled to Houthis in Yemen.
