The Israeli attacks on Iran have raised serious questions about the effectiveness of Iranian defense systems. These attacks raise the need to reassess the role of militias in Iran’s defense doctrine. Until October 7, 2023, Iran’s defense strategy was to target Israel in the event of an Israeli attack through Hezbollah’s swarms of kamikaze vehicles and missile strikes, the ground operations of Hezbollah, which gained offensive capabilities after the Syrian civil war and the Iranian-backed militias in Syria, and Iranian-developed ballistic and hypersonic missiles. As part of this military equation, the ‘Axis of Resistance’, including Hamas-led groups in Gaza, Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias in Syria, was planned to act as a united front in line with the ‘unity of fronts’ strategy.
This military plan was different from the plans of other countries. The states that organize their defense in other regions do so through conventional armies and formal alliance relations. However, Iranian defense policy is based on the idea that modern national borders are artificial, theorized in the “Umm al-Qura” theory developed by Mohammad Larijani, senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. According to this idea, the Islamic world is one nation, and its unity is ensured when the country that stands out with Islamic rule (Iran, according to Larijani) becomes the ‘Umm al-Qura’. The weakening of the ‘Umm al-Qura’ would affect the entire Islamic world, whose interests take precedence over those of peripheral actors.
Therefore, the ‘Axis of Resistance’ actors had to align their interests with Iran. This alignment was put to the test on October 7, 2003. The October 7 attack, carried out by Hamas without coordination with its allies, provoked different reactions within the ‘Axis of Resistance’. Hezbollah, to the disappointment of Palestinian public opinion, engaged in limited military engagement in northern Israel. Hashd al-Shaabi also carried out attacks on American bases in the framework of limited engagement, but the attacks were called off after the death of three American soldiers in one of the attacks. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, on the other hand, only made statements. In response, the Houthis took a more radical position, declaring war on Israel, launching ballistic and hypersonic missile attacks, and initiating a naval blockade of Israeli-bound vessels in the Red Sea, but the impact of these actions was limited due to technical limitations.
Israel accommodated the disorganized reactions of the Axis of Resistance, expelled Hamas from its territory, and launched an operation in Gaza. Then it moved north to target Hezbollah in a controlled manner, greatly weakening its capacity to resist. The heavy defeat of Hezbollah against Israel, which saved the Assad regime from collapse in 2013, combined with Russia’s depletion of resources due to the war in Ukraine, led the regime army to collapse in the face of the opposition offensive from Idlib to Aleppo. To prevent this situation, the deployment of Hashd al-Shaabi to Syria was on the agenda; however, they did not intervene in Syria. Unable to receive support, the regime fell from power on December 8, 2024.
So, where did Iran go wrong? Iran’s fundamental mistake was that it failed to foresee that the actors it was cooperating with had their priorities, including the main contradictions that threatened their existence. For Hamas, it was the expansion of the Abraham Accords, which pushed the Palestinian issue to the background, paving the way for the October 7 attack. Iran was also concerned about the Abraham Accords, but did not see it as an existential threat as Hamas did. For Syria, the main problem was economic sanctions; the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights was a secondary issue for Assad. Therefore, despite being part of the Axis of Resistance, Assad refrained from supporting Iran and Hezbollah after October 7; immediately after October 7, he approached the Gulf countries, expelled the Houthis from Damascus, and handed over the Yemeni embassy to the Saudi-backed Government of the Republic of Yemen.
A similar situation can be seen in the fact that Hezbollah, which intervened in the Syrian war in 2013, considering its break with Iran an existential threat, did not declare war on Israel directly after October 7. Despite being a Shiite organization, the legitimacy of its weapons was based on the defense of Lebanon, which had the tacit approval of different groups within the country. Therefore, a costly war that did not directly concern Lebanon would have undermined its legitimacy. In the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, Hezbollah declared victory, but Beirut was badly damaged. For this reason, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who would be assassinated in 2024, considered the start of the war a mistake. The deployment of Hashd al-Shaabi to Syria, which also came to the fore with the weakening of Hezbollah, did not materialize due to a lack of interest and the risk of Israeli attack.
Therefore, these actors are based on their existential priorities, not Iran’s. The fact that non-modern approaches put Iran at risk will necessitate a shift towards more modern forms of engagement in the future. Indeed, Iran’s efforts to purchase of new aircraftimmediately after the war, its transition to conventional defense planning, Khamenei’s refusal to make statements in 2025 about the Gulf countries, which he has long considered dependent on the United States, and the improved relations with these countries under İbrahim Reisi, point to this change.
A similar situation can be seen in the Iran-Iraq War, where Iran rejected the 1982 ceasefire and continued the war with the aim of spreading the revolution, disregarding the modern concept of borders. However, following the limited support of Iraqi Shiites during the war and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Iran started to recognize modern borders to emphasize the legitimacy of its position against Saddam. Furthermore, because Iran viewed the US-led coalition that came to the region after Iraq invaded Kuwait as a potential threat, it softened its harsh rhetoric towards the UN and began to accept UN sanctions against Iraq and comply with international norms.