IRAN’S STRATEGYIran's “Axis of Resistance”: Network Designed to Create Chaos, Fight Tehran's Enemies
Iran has been increasingly vocal about the prospect of additional firepower entering the fray to score a victory for what Tehran calls the “axis of resistance” against Israel. The axis, refined by the Islamic republic over the last four decades, is a loose-knit network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and allied state actors who play an important role in Iran’s strategy to oppose the West, Arab foes, and, primarily, Israel.
As fighting intensifies between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel, Iran has been increasingly vocal about the prospect of additional firepower entering the fray to score a victory for what Tehran calls the “axis of resistance” against Israel.
The axis, refined by the Islamic republic over the last four decades, is a loose-knit network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and allied state actors who play an important role in Iran’s strategy to oppose the West, Arab foes, and, primarily, Israel.
Active in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, the network allows Iran to create chaos in enemy territory, while allowing it to maintain a position of plausible deniability.
In the case of the latest conflict involving Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza, the stronger the Israeli response and the greater the blowback by Israel’s Shi’ite and Sunni enemies in the region, the better it is for Iran, experts say.
It is a strategy that dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to experts, but was honed and rebranded as the axis of resistance by the Quds Force, the elite overseas arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
“Although a new term, ‘axis of resistance’ describes an old phenomenon: any individual or group willing to fight Iran’s wars in return for funding, arms, military training, and intelligence support,” Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told RFE/RL in written comments.
But while Iran openly positions itself as the leading voice of the network as it calls for global resistance against Israel and the West, “the Quds Force avoids micromanagement and provides the proxies with some maneuvering room,” Alfoneh said.
This relative autonomy, which at times has even seen proxies and partners work against Tehran’s regional interests, makes it difficult to pin blame directly on Iran.
“If there is any kind of kinetic retaliation, your proxy, your partner absorbs the retaliation, and if your adversary wants to widen the scope, they have a hard time politically connecting the dots to do that,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told RFE/RL.
