Axis of Resistance: How Iran Builds, Operates, and Exploits Its Proxy Network

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Since the early 1980s, Iran, through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and particularly its external operations arm—the Quds Force—has built an expanding network of armed groups and regional allies that has evolved over the years into what is now known as the “Axis of Resistance.” Iran began building the infrastructure that would later lead to Hezbollah as early as 1982, during the Lebanese Civil War and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, when the IRGC deployed approximately 1,500 personnel to the Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah itself emerged gradually and was formally established only in the mid-1980s.

The “Axis of Resistance,” by contrast, as a broad regional network is a concept that developed later. Today, the network includes, among others, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq (such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and elements within the Popular Mobilization Forces), and Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is a deliberate strategy designed to expand Iranian influence and enable Tehran to strike at its adversaries without directly exposing itself to a full-scale military confrontation.
 

Training and Ties with Iran

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The central actor operating the training apparatus is the Quds Force—the IRGC’s principal arm for operations beyond Iran’s borders, simultaneously fulfilling military, intelligence, political, and diplomatic roles. An important distinction must be made: the Quds Force itself is an Iranian military force and is estimated to comprise between approximately 5,000 personnel (according to an IISS estimate) and 15,000 IRGC personnel. Alongside it, Iran operates a much broader network of local and foreign militias and organizations—including Iraqi, Afghan, Lebanese, and other forces—that receive varying degrees of support, training, and direction from the Quds Force, but are not organically part of it. The claim that the Quds Force at its peak paid the salaries of approximately 150,000 fighters across the region appears in Israeli sources, but this is an estimate that cannot be independently verified. It refers to the Quds Force’s ability to finance its broader network, not to the size of the force itself. The Quds Force is organized, among other things, around regional commands and functional units (such as the Lebanon command and the Iraq/Ramadan command), enabling it to maintain dedicated channels of communication, logistics, and training in each theater.

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A clear example of the depth of Iran’s training involvement is the “missile precision project” jointly pursued by Iran and Hezbollah beginning in 2013. Iran initially attempted to smuggle complete precision-guided missiles from Iran through Syria into Lebanon, but many of these transfers were thwarted in strikes attributed to the Israeli Air Force. In 2016, the method was changed: precision components and existing rockets were transferred for upgrading at the “CERS” facility in Syria. After that effort was also disrupted, production and conversion sites were established inside Lebanon itself, including a facility in the Bekaa Valley near the village of Nabi Chit that was exposed by the IDF on September 3, 2019—an exposure also documented in UN materials.

According to Israeli information, the project was overseen by then-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, while the key figure responsible for managing it on the ground was Mohammad Hussein Hejazi, who was based in Beirut, alongside Ali Asghar Nourouzi, head of the logistics department responsible for transferring the components from Iran through Syria to Lebanon. Three supply routes were used for the smuggling operation: overland through the Syria-Lebanon border, by sea, and by air via civilian flights landing at Beirut International Airport. In 2024, during the war between Israel and Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr—one of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, who was responsible, among other things, for the organization’s advanced weapons and precision-missile systems—was killed, while additional key infrastructure was damaged. These events demonstrated that the infrastructure established under the project remained a major target more than a decade after its inception.

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Similarly, in Yemen, the Houthis have received expertise in operating drones and long-range ballistic missiles—a conclusion also supported by an assessment from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), according to which the Quds Force has provided the Houthis with advanced weapons and training since 2014, including Iranian-origin missile and drone systems. Meanwhile, in Iraq, training is provided to Shiite militias, some of which are formally incorporated into the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or al-Hashd al-Sha'abi)—an Iraqi security institution officially recognized as part of the security apparatus and comprising dozens of groups, not all of them pro-Iranian. Among them is Kata’ib Hezbollah, a militia established with Iranian assistance and under the direct influence of the Quds Force. It was built to a significant extent on the model of Hezbollah in Lebanon, but operates largely independently of Iraq’s formal security institutions and is considered one of the Iraqi militias closest to Iran.

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The Relationship Between the Quds Force and the Leadership of the Proxy Groups

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Alongside ongoing training, close personal and institutional ties exist between Quds Force commanders and the military and political leadership of organizations belonging to the Axis, including at the highest levels of command. For example, in February 2024, Ismail Qaani—the commander of the Quds Force—met with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, in Beirut. The meeting was revealed in a Reuters report in March 2024 based on seven sources. According to the report, Nasrallah told Qaani that Hezbollah would fight with its own forces in the event of a war with Israel (“This is our war”) and asked Iran to avoid being dragged into a direct war with Israel or the United States—a detail illustrating that even within patron-client relationships, there is room for negotiation and conflicting interests. According to the same report, before arriving in Beirut, Qaani met in Iran with commanders of pro-Iranian militias from Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, in the presence of Hezbollah representatives and Hossein Salami, commander of the IRGC.

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At the operational level, reports have described secret coordination calls between senior Quds Force field officers and Houthi military and security officials in Yemen, intended to discuss responses to the possibility of a direct Israeli-American attack on Tehran. Iranian envoys—both military and political—visit operational theaters, either directly or through diplomatic intermediaries and local agents, to convey instructions and ensure adherence to Tehran’s strategic line. The killing of Qassem Soleimani in early 2020 temporarily weakened the effectiveness of personal ties with some of the proxy groups. This was reflected in statements made by Kata’ib Hezbollah in early 2024, when the militia sought to emphasize its operational independence from Iran—although it is unclear whether this represented genuine operational autonomy or an attempt to distance Iran from public responsibility. Soleimani’s successor, Ismail Qaani, worked to preserve the network of relationships, even if with varying degrees of intensity and effectiveness compared with the past. It should be noted that following the 2026 war, conflicting and unverified reports emerged regarding Qaani’s personal fate, including rumors of injury, detention, or even death. However, later reports—including a visit reportedly made by him to Baghdad in April 2026—continued to portray him as serving as commander of the Quds Force.

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Financing and Armament

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The Quds Force serves as one of the principal mechanisms for transferring resources to Iran’s proxies—the main point of contact between Iran and these organizations, providing training, weapons, and funding—although financing in practice is also routed through front companies, financial systems, Iran’s Ministry of Defense, and other entities. The force finances and operates Shiite militias in Iraq, transfers precision missiles and funding to Hezbollah, arms and trains the Houthi rebels in Yemen—including the provision of drones and long-range missiles, according to an assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which states that both the Quds Force and Hezbollah assisted in training the Houthis in the operation, assembly, and maintenance of missiles and drones—and provides funding and military and technological assistance to Palestinian terrorist organizations.

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The results of this financing and procurement are evident in the scale of the arsenals accumulated by the proxy groups. Over the years, Hezbollah has also been reported to possess a stockpile of long-range Scud-D missiles, which according to Israeli estimates have a range of up to approximately 700 kilometers, although the precise size of the stockpile is unknown and different sources have provided widely varying estimates over the years. In May 2024, Hezbollah intensified its use of heavy Burkan rockets, carrying warheads weighing up to 500 kilograms, and also conducted attacks using explosive-laden attack drones—evidence of the continued upgrading of capabilities supplied by Iran.

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How Iran Operates and Uses Its Proxies

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The Axis is not a monolithic entity with a single chain of command, but rather a network of allies with overlapping interests, which Iran coordinates and directs to varying degrees depending on circumstances—a reality clearly demonstrated during the 2026 war. On February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States launched a joint preemptive military offensive against Iran, during which more than 1,000 targets in Iran were reportedly struck, including nuclear facilities, missile sites, IRGC facilities, and senior regime officials. The members of the Axis did not all join simultaneously: Hezbollah entered the fighting at the beginning of March 2026, while the Houthis initially waited and monitored developments. By the end of March 2026, they too joined the campaign, carrying out their first attacks against Israel since the cessation of their previous activity under the Gaza ceasefire in October 2025, including the launch of a ballistic missile, a cruise missile, and an unmanned aerial vehicle. Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf subsequently praised the participation of elements of the “resistance front,” led by Hezbollah, in the campaign. The differing timing of their entry—not simultaneous and not automatic—clearly demonstrates that the Axis operates as a network of organizations possessing a degree of autonomy, coordinating their actions with Tehran rather than functioning as a single command structure.

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Another example of coordinated operations is the series of attacks carried out by pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, which claimed responsibility for approximately 100 attacks using missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles against American bases and facilities in Iraq, Jordan, and the Gulf states—a figure also corroborated by the Pentagon. Some of these attacks were directly lethal: on January 28, 2024, three U.S. soldiers were killed and 47 wounded in a drone attack on Tower 22 in Jordan, an attack attributed to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iraqi militias supported by Iran. Earlier, on November 12, 2023, the United States carried out strikes against IRGC facilities and associated elements in the Abu Kamal (Al-Bukamal) and Mayadin areas of Syria, as part of a broader cycle of retaliation for a series of previous militia attacks. In direct response to the Tower 22 attack, the United States conducted a wide-ranging round of strikes on February 2, 2024, hitting more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria associated with the IRGC and Iran-backed militias—illustrating the direct cycle of retaliation absorbed by the proxies rather than by Iran itself.

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A fundamentally different case was the attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan in July 2026, in which an Iranian missile penetrated air-defense systems and struck military quarters. Initial reports indicated that two U.S. personnel had been killed and a third was missing; it was later determined that three U.S. soldiers had been killed in the attack. It is important to emphasize that, unlike the Tower 22 attack, this was a direct Iranian attack rather than a proxy operation—and it demonstrates precisely the limits of the proxy model: when the conflict escalated into a direct war between Iran, the United States, and Israel, Tehran itself was forced to employ its missile systems against American targets in the region rather than relying solely on its proxies.

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How the Proxies Serve Iranian Interests

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For Iran, the Axis serves several strategic functions simultaneously: it extends Iranian influence beyond its borders without requiring a large permanent military presence; it provides “strategic depth” and an additional deterrent capability alongside Iran’s ballistic-missile program; and it enables Tehran to portray itself as the leader of a broad ideological “resistance front” against Israel, the United States, and their allied Sunni Gulf states—a framing that also serves the regime’s domestic legitimacy.

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Using Proxies to Attack Rivals at Limited Cost

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One of the central strategic advantages of the model is the ability to exert military pressure through local actors while maintaining a degree of distance between Iran and the operation itself—an advantage sometimes described as “plausible deniability.” When Hezbollah, the Houthis, or an Iraqi militia carries out an attack, Iran may be able to avoid direct responsibility and the military response that might otherwise follow if it had conducted the operation itself. However, it is important not to present this as the sole or permanent purpose of the model: after 2024, and certainly after 2026, when Iran itself directly attacked Israel and American forces in the region, it became clear that Tehran does not always seek to conceal its involvement.

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A prominent example of this pattern of publicly creating distance was the statements issued by Kata’ib Hezbollah in early 2024, after the militia came under American strikes following the Tower 22 attack. Its spokespeople claimed that “our brothers in the Axis—especially in the Islamic Republic—do not know how we operate,” an attempt to publicly distance the actions on the ground from Iranian responsibility, even though the training, financial, and weapons relationships remained intact. An earlier example was Iran’s deliberate avoidance of direct involvement in the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel from October 2023 to September 2024. As reported, an Iranian security official acknowledged to Reuters that direct Iranian involvement could serve Israel’s interests and provide justification for continued American military presence in the region; Tehran therefore preferred to place the main burden of the fighting on Hezbollah itself. This model allows Tehran to wear down its adversaries through prolonged attritional attacks without exposing its own territory or regular armed forces to direct risk—and shifts a significant portion of the “blood cost” and escalation risk onto local proxies and the populations in which they operate (Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza). For example, while Hezbollah suffered, according to IDF figures, 44 fatalities among its operatives in the month following the late-2024 ceasefire alone, there were no comparable losses among Iran’s leadership during the same period.

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However, this model also exposes an inherent limitation: when adversaries nevertheless choose to attack Iran itself directly—as occurred in the joint Israeli-American preemptive offensive at the end of February 2026, during which, according to estimates published afterward, more than 1,000 targets inside Iran itself were struck—the extent to which the Axis actually protects Tehran is immediately called into question. In this case, although the Houthis and Hezbollah announced that they were joining the campaign and carried out retaliatory attacks, this did not prevent extensive direct strikes against Iranian territory itself. This suggests that the deterrent value of the Axis may be greater under routine conditions than in a situation of direct and comprehensive confrontation.

 

Iran’s proxy model combines three mutually reinforcing components: a mechanism of continuous training and operational support through the Quds Force; personal and institutional channels connecting the Iranian command structure with local leaderships; and a financing and armament network that provides the proxies with the capabilities required to operate. Together, these components allow Iran to project its power across the region, advance its strategic and ideological objectives, and strike at its adversaries, while a significant portion of the military, human, and political costs is borne by the proxies themselves and the populations in which they operate. As the 2026 war demonstrates, however, when confrontation becomes direct between Iran and its adversaries, Tehran itself is also forced to bear the associated costs and risks.