How Iran Extends Its Power Via Allied Militant Groups

 As Israel braces for retaliation for an April 1 airstrike on Iran’s diplomatic buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, intelligence officials posed two possibilities: Iran might attack Israel directly, or it could lash out through the network of allied foreign militias it has supported and nurtured for decades. In either case, the militias, which have stepped up actions against Israel since the start of its war with the Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas in October, would be likely to escalate their aggression should Israel-Iran tensions provoke a broader regional conflagration.

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. They 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 avoided open warfare since, preferring the deniability and lower casualty rates offered by the use of covert operations and proxy forces.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-13/iran-proxies-how-the-country-extends-its-power-via-allied-militant-groups