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Iran Is Reassessing Its Proxy Strategy

(Jerusalem Strategic Tribune) Ehud Yaari - The top echelons of the Iranian regime are reassessing whether to invest billions more dollars to reconstruct the armed proxies it established in recent decades, as these funds are desperately needed at home. Many political elites of Tehran have concluded that throwing good funds after bad (funds lost during the current war) is no longer viable. The sums involved would be huge and the resupply of proxies made difficult by the loss of land corridors in Syria. Iran was content to let Arabs fight and die for its cause but is not willing to sacrifice its own soldiers and interests in order to bolster severely weakened junior allies. The performance of Hizbullah, Hamas and the other factions in Gaza, as well as the Syrian Army, have all bitterly disappointed their Iranian mentors. Iran has been slow in providing Hizbullah, its single most important proxy, with financial assistance. This is causing widespread resentment among Hizbullah's popular base. When the Lebanese regular army moved recently to close military bases of Palestinian armed groups in the country, especially the Popular Front, there was not one word of reprimand from Tehran. The writer is chief Middle East commentator of Israel's Channel 12 and an international fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2025-01-02 00:00:00
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