Be it the murders of Israeli civilians, the bombing of merchant shipping in the Red Sea, attacks in Syria or Iraq, all were carried out by members of the “Axis of Resistance”. It is Hamas, Islamist terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. The Shiite groups, with the exception of Hamas, which follows the ideology of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, have in common that they follow radical Islam and reject the Western way of life.
All of these attacks by the groups, dubbed the “Axis of Resistance,” are orchestrated, coordinated, financed and armed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Brigades. The question remains to what extent Tehran controls and directs its allies. Not everyone is equally closely linked to the Iranian regime.
The term of the “Axis of Resistance” was coined in 2002 as a reaction to US President George W. Bush, who in his State of the Nation address described Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the “Axis of Evil”. After the civil war in Syria began in 2011, the Iranian leadership increasingly used the term to describe its alliance with the regime of Bashar al-Asad in Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
The alliance, which in its current form was shaped by General Qassem Soleimani, killed in 2020, secures Iran’s influence in Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad. It serves Tehran to project power in the region, but also as reassurance in the event of an attack by the US or Israel on its own territory. Since the devastating war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iran has pursued a strategy of forward defense. Main goal is to resolve conflicts with its rivals outside of its own territory, if possible.
Following the statements of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran, its “Axis members” are equal partners who act according to their own interests. Iran only supports them politically and at best provides “military advisors”. The Iranian revolutionary leader praised Hamas’ attack, but emphasized that the Palestinian militia had acted independently, Western secret services also assume that Iran was not informed about the attack or involved in the planning. However, it has long been documented that the Quds Brigades supplies Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as allies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, with rockets, drones and other weapons. Western warships regularly intercept ships carrying hidden weapons shipments for the Houthis off the coast of Yemen.
The main actors of the Iranian „Axis“
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards were founded in 1979 to protect the mullahs’ dictatorship. The merger of revolutionary militias has now become a regular army with around 125,000 soldiers. They include its own navy, air force and missile forces as well as the Quds Forces Brigades under the command of Ismail Ghani. This special unit for foreign operations with 15,000 men coordinates the network of allied militias in the region.
The Syrian regime of the Assad family is Iran’s oldest ally. The Syrian despotism already supported Tehran under the father of the current dictator in Damascus. After the devastating civil war, the Syrian army has been greatly weakened. Without the military help from the Iranian Quds Brigades, the Lebanese Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, Asad would probably have lost the war against the rebels.
Hezbollah is Iran’s closest and most important ally. Since its founding in 1982, the “Party of God” has become a central player in Lebanese politics and a serious military threat to Israel. Ideologically, financially and militarily, Hassan Nasrallah’s Shiite movement is closely linked to Iran. Today the militia is said to have stationed 130,000 rockets on the border with Israel.
Hamas shares with Iran its rejection of Israel and the goal of destroying the Jewish state. The Palestinian party and militia have received aid from Tehran since the 1990s. Ideologically, however, it is closer to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood than to the Shiite regime in Iran. It supported the rebels in the Syrian civil war for years, which led to a conflict with Iran that was only resolved in 2017.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has been one of Iran’s allies since 1979, but the Islamist militia has never achieved the same importance as Hamas. According to Western intelligence services, the PIJ recently received $30 million a year from Iran, while Hamas received $70 million. In the Gaza Strip, the relationship between the two groups fluctuates between rivalry and cooperation.
The Houthis only joined the “Axis of Resistance” very late. The Islamist movement, officially called “Ansar Allah,” is based in the mountainous north of Yemen in the Zaidi ethnic region, a subgroup of Shiites. After seizing power in the capital Sanaa in 2015, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states launched a military intervention to drive out the Houthis, and as a result of this commitment, Iran greatly expanded its support.
In Iraq, the Badr Organization is Iran’s oldest ally. The Shiite militia returned home from exile in Iran after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Other important partners in Iraq are the Shiite militias “Kataib Hizbullah” and “Asaib Ahl al-Haq”, which played an important role in the fight against the American occupation and, after 2014, in the fight against IS.
The present situation
Thanks to Iranian help, Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah are now producing many rockets and drones themselves. However, the Quds Brigades continue to support their allies with trainers in the production and use of the weapons. In Syria, the number of Iranian “military advisers” rose to as many as 3,000 during the civil war. They were crucial in coordinating the fight against the rebels and were sometimes in charge themselves.
The mullahs in Tehran have been trying to expand their influence in the region since their revolution in 1979, but have repeatedly encountered resistance. The original goal of Iranian politics since coming to power was to “export revolution”. For this purpose, the “Office for Islamic Liberation Movements” was created within the Revolutionary Guard in the early 1980s. With this support, Hezbollah was founded in 1982 from local Shiite militias to fight against Israel, which was then occupying southern Lebanon.
Gulf states and other Sunni neighbors felt threatened by Tehran’s revolutionary rhetoric and supported Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. With the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator by the USA in 2003, Iran was able to expand its influence in Iraq.
The extent of Iran’s control over members of the so-called Axis varies. Militias like the Fatimiyun and the Zainabiyun, which Iran has set up from Afghan and Pakistani Shiites specifically for operations in Syria, are directly under the command of the Quds Force. Other allies, such as the militias in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are closely linked to the Iranian regime, but are not simply mindless puppets.
Despite their ideological proximity, they remain autonomous actors with their own interests and their own agenda. They are firmly rooted in their respective societies and are influential actors in the politics of their countries. Western intelligence officials also now assume that Iran does not completely control all of its allies. It is believed that some militia attacks on American bases in Iraq were carried out against the will of the Iranians.
It is also unclear how closely the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are coordinated with Iran. The movement, which has controlled most of Yemen for years, is still only loosely linked to Iran. Hamas, in turn, has had contacts with Tehran for 30 years, but the Sunni movement has always played a special role in the predominantly Shiite “Axis of Resistance”. The fact that Hamas did not inform its allies in advance about the major attack on Israel was not well received by the Iranians and Hezbollah.
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