Iran showcases its reach with militia attacks across Middle East

Houthi troopers stand guard in Sanaa, Yemen, during a protest on Friday. (Osamah Yahya/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Iran showcases its reach with militia attacks across Middle East

Washington Post-January 1, 2024

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Suzan Haidamous

BEIRUT — The Gaza war has given Iran the opportunity to showcase the capacity of its newly restructured network of allied militias, demonstrating Tehran’s strategic reach while allowing it to keep a distance from the fight, according to members of the groups and military analysts.

On any given day since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel, one or other of these militias has carried out an attack somewhere in the Middle East — and on some days several in different places. The Houthis in Yemen are targeting ships in the Red Sea; Kataib Hezbollah and other Iraqi groups are hitting U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria; and Lebanon’s Hezbollah is engaged in daily exchanges of fire with Israeli forces across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The attacks can seem random, but they are the fruit of a carefully calibrated strategy forged in the wake of the 2020 killing of Qasem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, to bring cohesion to the loosely formed alliance of militias — designated by Tehran as the “axis of resistance.”

Although the groups seem unrelated — a rebel organization in Yemen; a guerrilla movement in Lebanon; and militias formed to fight U.S. troops in Iraq — they all have one thing in common: their loyalty to Iran, which arms, finances and inspires them, the members of the groups and analysts said. Together with Hamas, they constitute the main components of the “resistance” axis.

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“What these different elements have done, moving forward with these attacks, shows the strength of this proxy network Iran has established throughout the region and how much of a concern it is,” said Joseph Votel, the former Centcom commander who oversaw U.S. troops in the region at the time of the U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed Soleimani.

In interviews, officials associated with three of the main groups described a level of coordination previously unmatched in the nearly two decades since Iran began cultivating a variety of local allies as a way of extending its regional influence. Representatives of the militias collaborate and consult through a joint operations room that meets regularly, typically but not always, in Beirut, they said.