Neighbouring states have long formed the gravitational centre of Iranian foreign-policy thinking, even as the country's strategic influence stretches outward across the broader Middle East. Proxy networks — among them Hezbollah, Iraqi militia formations, Yemen's Ansarullah movement, also known as the Houthis, and various Palestinian armed factions — have functioned as a preferred instrument through which Iran pursues regional influence and applies pressure on adversarial states, a posture that sidesteps direct military engagement.
Tehran's web of proxy relationships has functioned, according to analysts, as a buffer layer that pushes its military footprint outward and confronts opponents with the possibility of coordinated responses across several theatres simultaneously. Networks of allied armed groups have allowed Iran to project regional leverage beyond what its conventional military capacity and economic weight would otherwise permit.
Tehran's alliance network across the region absorbed notable blows in the wake of the October 2023 outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas, with Hezbollah and Hamas each bearing the heaviest losses, and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's administration in Syria cutting off the overland corridors that had connected Iran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.
Questions being raised among analysts centre on whether Iran will maintain its established web of proxy relationships across the Middle East or recalibrate that strategy in light of the pressures those alliances have faced — among them, the collapse of a foothold in Syria. Available indicators point to a reconfiguration of Tehran's network of allied groups, driven by shifting pressures and new fault lines across the region.
Losses sustained by Hezbollah and other allied armed factions have not, by any visible measure, prompted Tehran to reconsider its dependence on those networks for advancing its position across the region. For years, Iran operated on the assumption that a network of allied armed groups scattered across the region would raise the price of any direct attack on its territory high enough to deter both Israel and the United States from attempting one. Missile arsenals held by Hezbollah formed a cornerstone of the deterrence architecture that planners in Tehran had constructed around the group's capabilities. Armed factions operating out of Iraq kept American regional interests under pressure, while Palestinian Islamic Jihad maintained a separate capacity to conduct military operations against Israel from within Gaza.
More frequent direct confrontations between Iran and Israel have brought into relief a notable constraint on Tehran's ability to lean on its network of regional partners. Such networks can broaden a country's strategic footprint, yet they stop well short of shielding it from direct strikes or binding allied partners to its defence.
Discussions within Tehran's leadership about reinforcing the country's strategic standing through available policy tools appear to be underway. A shift in posture has become detectable within Iran's defence planning, where building up domestic armed capacity now appears to carry more weight alongside the country's longstanding network of allied forces in the region.
Hezbollah's arc as an organisation offers a window into both the reach and the limits of Iran's strategy of cultivating armed partners across the region — for a sustained period, the group held a position as Tehran's most operationally capable ally and a load-bearing element of its confrontational posture toward Israel. Analysts have noted that the size of the country's ballistic stockpile, combined with its geography along Israel's northern flank, could factor into assessments of whether a second theatre of conflict might open should direct hostilities break out between the two sides.
Findings from the 2023–2024 fighting between Israel and Hezbollah pointed to the vulnerabilities that can arise when a party's strategy rests on a single ally whose battlefield standing may shift. Some observers contend that Hezbollah gives Tehran a degree of bargaining power in its confrontation with Israel, yet how durable that function proves will depend on the group's ability to maintain its standing — across both armed capacity and domestic politics — within Lebanon.
Analysts generally describe Tehran's ties to Hamas as spanning both political and military dimensions, while noting that such involvement falls short of granting Iran any direct authority over the group's decision-making or day-to-day operations. Though it maintains its own command structure and pursues goals shaped by its own internal priorities, the Palestinian group operates with a level of independence from Iranian influence. Conflict between Israel and Hamas laid bare the limits of Iranian backing — whether political or military in nature — as a shield capable of deterring Israeli armed operations against its partners.
Arms deliveries, battlefield instruction, and diplomatic backing represent avenues through which Iran's support for Hamas could translate into expanded operational capacity. Analysts have noted that providing sustained protection to Hamas across an extended military engagement would place considerably greater strain on Iran, with the prospect that regional neighbours become drawn into the conflict. Ties between Iran and the various groups that fall under the Axis of Resistance umbrella differ considerably in character and closeness, and shared strategic goals do not automatically translate into obligations for mutual defence.
With Hezbollah and Hamas each having absorbed notable battlefield setbacks, the Houthis have taken on a more prominent role within the broader alliance of armed groups that Iran coordinates across the region. Territory under Houthi administration across portions of Yemen provides an additional lever through which Iran can exert influence over shipping that passes through the Red Sea, particularly at Bab el-Mandeb — a constricted chokepoint that sees some of the world's densest commercial vessel movement. The Strait of Hormuz sits at the centre of this picture, given its role as a passage through which a substantial share of the world's oil and traded goods must flow.
Attacks on Red Sea shipping routes have drawn the Houthis into a broader regional picture, with analysts noting that the group's naval pressure extends Iran's reach into waters that lie well beyond the Persian Gulf — a maritime arena distinct from the overland corridor connecting Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Houthis carry their own political agenda and battlefield priorities, ones that frequently diverge from what Tehran pursues.
The term "proxy" can impose a tidy, hierarchical chain of command running back to Tehran — a portrayal that may not capture how those ties actually operate in practice. Each of these four armed and political actors — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi militia factions, Hamas among Palestinians, and Yemen's Ansarullah movement — maintains distinct local agendas shaped by the specific conflicts and governance structures of their respective territories. Iran furnishes these groups with resources spanning money, logistics, and weaponry at varying levels, yet that backing stops well short of turning them into instruments wholly directed by Tehran.
On occasion, the priorities and tactical thinking of these groups pull away from what Tehran would prefer, producing choices that follow a different course. Where such independence takes hold, the communities involved may find it easier to cultivate grassroots backing and sustain themselves over time. Such actions carry the potential to run counter to Tehran's stated priorities, particularly where they set off an escalation that the country has neither sought nor shown the capacity to contain. Balancing leverage over allied factions against the unpredictability of their autonomous choices represents a persistent tension for Iranian policymakers.
A decentralised web of armed factions spread across Iraq and the Levant has long underpinned Iran's regional posture, though evolving conditions on the ground raise the prospect of that arrangement splintering further. Prolonged pressure has not dismantled the operational or political foundations of Iraqi armed factions and Hezbollah, both of which appear positioned to hold onto considerable sway. Armed factions among Palestinians are expected to continue their involvement in the fighting against Israel.
How well Tehran can fold its own fighting capacity together with the expanding networks of allied armed factions will shape the extent of its sway across the region. Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drone platforms together broaden the range of direct-strike options available to Iran against its opponents. Among the listed objectives are sites within Israel alongside bases and facilities used by the US military across the broader region.
Direct exchanges between Iran and Israel brought two distinct characteristics of Iran's combined missile and drone arsenal into focus: the ability to reach targets across considerable distances, alongside a persistent difficulty in penetrating the multi-layered air defence network guarding Israeli airspace — a network that, while it has functioned at a high level, does not guarantee complete protection against every threat. Naval reach forms one layer of how Iran projects influence across the broader region.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz places Iran in a position to influence the flow of tanker traffic, with any interruption carrying downstream consequences for energy supplies and the economies of neighbouring states. Mines, drones, fast-attack vessels, and anti-ship missiles collectively expand the range of tools available to Iran for disrupting commercial shipping lanes and complicating any external military calculus. Vessel traffic moving through and near the Strait of Hormuz has faced a series of obstacles since late February, laying bare how difficult it is to keep merchant ships safe across the Persian Gulf.
Alliances stretching well beyond the Persian Gulf give Iran a notably wider footprint across the region. Attacks on vessels passing through Bab el-Mandeb and the broader Red Sea corridor have pushed disruptions to commercial shipping well past the Persian Gulf, with those operations driven by the group's own stated aims within the Yemen conflict. Where Operation Prosperity Guardian produced measurable battlefield gains, its broader strategic objectives went unmet — a conclusion that analysts themselves continue to debate. Comparable difficulties have surfaced in the ongoing Hormuz Strait standoff, where shipping lanes have not been brought back to a reliably passable state despite a military presence in the area.
Missile systems, drone fleets, and naval assets form one layer of a broader architecture that also encompasses allied armed factions — a distributed arrangement that points to an evolution in approach rather than a breakdown of it. Proxy forces spread across the region have long served as a buffer for Iran, allowing it to project influence and keep potential conflicts away from its own borders. The period that followed put the boundaries of that strategy on display.
Building up its own armed forces while keeping a network of allied groups active across the region, Iran has pursued a dual-track posture that complicates the defence planning of rival states. Analysts have suggested that the network of proxy forces associated with Tehran may shift over time toward a structure that blends those affiliated armed factions with an expanded set of military assets under the direct command of the Iranian government. Any shift toward more traditional forms of engagement between the two sides would unfold alongside Iran's continued reliance on allied networks across the region. At the heart of the debate lies a question about whether combining standing armed forces with allied militia networks can produce a deterrence posture that opposing powers would take seriously.
