Iran’s use of proxy warfare likely to persist, experts say

While uncertainty surrounds political succession in Iran after its president and foreign minister died in a helicopter crash, analysts say it is unlikely their deaths will alter the country’s projection of power through heavily armed allied groups in the Middle East.

Those groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, multiple militias in Iraq and Hamas in the Palestinian territories — are central to Iran’s ability to wield influence far beyond its borders despite being under strict economic sanctions for decades.

Iran works with these groups through the Quds Force, a division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Guard answers directly to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not to the government run by the president. So even in a time of internal maneuvering and uncertainty after the deaths Sunday of President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, analysts expect little change in the groups’ rhythm of attacks or overall approach.

Indeed, on Monday there were skirmishes between Hezbollah and the Israeli military near the Israeli-Lebanese border. Tuesday morning, Iran-linked groups in Iraq announced that they had launched a strike at a base in Israel. It was as if Iran’s allies were signaling that it was business as usual by making the kinds of attacks that have become commonplace in recent months.

“From the very early messages that the Iranian regime sent after the president’s helicopter disappeared, it was clear that they wanted to project an image of stability around succession, and the activities of the groups will be part of that,” said Trita Parsi, the executive director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

“Iran knows very well that this is the moment when the country is most vulnerable and so it is most important for them to be able to project that they have institutionalized policies that are not dependent on individuals, to show they have the ability to handle an unforeseen event,” he added.

In a state where clerics hold ultimate authority, a change in supreme leaders would be far more momentous than a change in presidents. Iran sees its public handling of Raisi’s death as a means of signaling that it will manage the eventual succession of Khamenei, 85, equally smoothly, experts said.

Because it is the Quds Force that manages the militias, providing them with arms, training and intelligence, there is no reason to expect any great change in those relations, said Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology Programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Iran sees any kind of internal disruption as an opportunity for their enemies, so in the next 50 days they are going to be even more paranoid, and that might make them a bit more cautious,” said Harding, a former CIA analyst focused on the Middle East.

The one caveat, she added, is that if the proxies come under attack during this period of uncertainty, then Iran might be more eager than usual for the groups to retaliate and avoid the appearance of weakness, Harding said.

Day to day, however, most of the proxy groups make their own decisions on when and where to attack, making it difficult for Iran to calibrate their actions. That means there is a very real danger of miscalculation that could set off a cycle of retaliation.

Neither the US nor Iran appear to want a direct armed conflict, but they came close to one in January, when an Iran-backed militia based in Iraq launched a drone attack on a US base in Jordan. There had been well over 100 militia attacks on US forces in the region since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, but this one penetrated US air defenses, killing three troops and seriously wounding dozens more.

The United States retaliated by striking sites in Iraq and Syria used by allied militias, but refrained from hitting inside Iran, which would have been a far more serious escalation.

The Iran-allied groups, which call themselves the Axis of Resistance, have demonstrated the ability to attack and disrupt across a vast region almost daily since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Militant groups in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen have launched drones and missiles at Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas have fired rockets into Israel, and the Houthis have fired on international shipping vessels off Yemen’s coast, sinking one vessel and damaging several others.

When such strikes go awry, it is the fighters who bear the brunt of any retaliatory strikes from Israel or the United States, largely giving Iran the ability to assert its power while keeping much of the conflict far from its own borders.

Two senior members of the groups in Iraq said they did not expect any change in their pattern of attacks.

However, there is one way that the groups will be at least tangentially affected by the fatal helicopter crash in Iran, said Patrick Clawson, a senior research counselor at the Washington Institute who has long focused on Iran.

While attention has focused on the death of Raisi, it was Amirabdollahian, the foreign minister, who traveled constantly throughout the Middle East, was fluent in Arabic and was regularly in touch with both the political leaders of the armed groups and the factions they were closest to in their governments, said Clawson.

“It was a real advantage that Amirabdollahian spoke Arabic. He would sort of mix with the Axis of Resistance guys and talk to them, and he could talk to their diplomats,” he said, adding that a key to how Iran has exercised influence over the armed groups has been through the relationships it forged with the groups’ leaders.

That role was once played by Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard until the United States assassinated him in 2020. His successor, Esmail Qaani, has a lower profile and is less comfortable speaking Arabic, according to some Axis of Resistance leaders who have worked with him.

That meant the role fell to Amirabdollahian to help maintain those relationships, said Clawson. Now, it is an open question whether the groups, some of which are already difficult for Iran to control, could become even more difficult.