How Iran Extends Its Power Via Allied Militant Groups

The escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has raised anew the possibility of all-out war between them. Blaming Israel for the July 31 killing in Tehran of the political chief of the Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, Iran has promised to retaliate. Should it come to full-fledged war, one of Iran’s most valuable assets would be the network of allied foreign militias in addition to Hamas that it has supported and nurtured for decades. The militias have already stepped up actions against Israel since the start of its war with Hamas in October.

Iran has been funding and arming militant groups abroad since soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution as the nation’s new fundamentalist Shiite Muslim leaders sought to spread their mission to the rest of the region. The groups are nurtured by Iran’s Quds Force, a wing of the country’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that emerged from Iran’s 1980-1988 war with Iraq. Though Iran fought Iraq’s better armed, Western-backed forces to a standstill, the economic and human cost was devastating. Iran’s leaders have mostly avoided open warfare since. Though Israel and Iran did exchange direct aerial attacks in April, Iran generally has preferred the deniability and lower casualty rates offered by the use of covert operations and proxy forces belonging to its so-called Axis of Resistance.