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The Iranian Resistance Axis wants to destroy US dominance. Photo/Reuters
TEHERAN – As fighting intensifies between Palestinian Hamas, designated a dangerous organization by the European Union and the United States, and Israel, Iran has become increasingly vocal about the prospect of adding weapons to achieve victory for what Tehran calls its “axis of resistance” against Israel.
The axis, refined by Islamists over the past four decades, is a loose network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and allied state actors that plays a key role in Iran’s strategy to fight the West, Arab enemies, and Arab states, especially, Israel.
Active in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, these networks allow Iran to create chaos in enemy territory, while allowing it to maintain a position of plausible deniability.
In the case of the latest conflict involving Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza, the stronger Israel’s response and the greater the blowback that Israel’s Shiite and Sunni enemies exert in the region, the better for Iran.
7 Strategies of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, International Networks Against US Domination
1. Has developed since the Islamic Revolution in 1979
Photo/Reuters
It’s a strategy that dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to experts, but has been honed and rebranded as an axis of resistance by the Quds Force, Iran’s elite overseas branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“While a new term, ‘axis of resistance’ describes an old phenomenon: any individual or group willing to fight in Iran in exchange for funds, weapons, military training and intelligence support,” Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Gulf Arab States Institute in Washington , told RFE/RL.
2. Providing Autonomy to Proxies
Photo/Reuters
But while Iran openly positions itself as the leader of the network when calling for global resistance against Israel and the West, “the Quds Force avoids micromanagement and gives proxies room to maneuver,” Alfoneh said.
This relative autonomy, which has sometimes seen proxies and partners work against Tehran’s regional interests, makes it difficult to blame Iran directly.
“If there’s a kinetic type of retaliation, your representatives, your partners are going to suffer that retaliation, and if your adversaries want to broaden the scope of it, they’re going to have a hard time politically connecting the dots to do that,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior researcher at the Foundation think tank for Defense of Democracies, based in Washington, told RFE/RL.
3. Destroy Iran’s Enemies
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