Axis of Resistance

The Axis of Resistance allows Iran to project military and political power beyond its borders while limiting its direct exposure to retaliation. The network receives Iranian financial aid, weapons, training, guidance, and operational advice, and provides Tehran with a degree of deniability for attacks by its partners.[6] It has also been described as a collection of independent Islamist groups used to enhance Iranian power projection and create instability for Iran’s regional enemies.[7]

Iran’s strategic logic includes a “forward defense” doctrine: confronting enemies outside Iran is preferable to facing them within its borders.[3] Proxy relationships also reduce the personnel and reputational costs of intervention and allow Iran to rely on forces familiar with local conditions. The network supports Tehran’s efforts to counter the United States and Israel, compensate for limitations in conventional military power, and extend strategic depth across the region.[6][3]

For Israel, the network presents a political, military, and diplomatic challenge across several fronts. The Reut Institute described a related “Resistance Network” of states and organizations that reject Israel’s existence and act against it.[8] The ADL similarly describes Iran-aligned terrorist groups as sharing the aim of destroying Israel and striking Jewish targets.[9] In surveys of British Jews, 87 percent in 2010 and 85 percent in 2024 agreed that Iran represented a threat to Israel’s existence.[10]

The concept’s ideological roots lie in Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. A Combating Terrorism Center study explains that the “Axis of Resistance” initially existed as a rhetorical goal through which the new regime sought regional influence and challenged the existing order; it later became a tangible collection of state and non-state actors.[3] Iran’s first major durable partnership emerged in the early 1980s, when the Revolutionary Guard helped establish Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged in 2016 that the organization’s budget, supplies, and weapons came from Iran.[5]

The network expanded after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and during the upheavals that began in 2010–2011.[4] Its present form became particularly visible in Syria’s civil war, when Iran pushed Hezbollah to send experienced fighters to support Bashar Assad and integrated other IRGC-assisted groups into the campaign.[1] A study of 24 militias active in Syria from 2011 to 2019 documented 316 support relationships: 238 involving Iranian actors and 78 involving Hezbollah.[3] The United States estimated that Iran spent more than $16 billion supporting the Assad regime and associated forces between 2012 and 2020.[5]

Hamas followed a less direct path. It is a Sunni Islamist terrorist organization with Muslim Brotherhood origins, unlike the predominantly Shiite actors at the network’s core. Iran cut its funding in 2012 after Hamas refused to support Assad, then resumed financial assistance in 2017.[5] A Hebrew Union College transcript explains that Hamas reestablished Iranian links after becoming isolated within both Sunni and Shiite regional camps.[11] Ismail Haniyeh later praised fronts extending from Palestine to Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq “with the support and backing of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” while crediting Iran with money, weapons, and technical support.[12]

Iranian support for the Houthis expanded after their 2014 alliance with former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the ensuing war against Yemen’s Saudi-backed government.[13] One Jerusalem Post account places their entry into the axis after substantial Iranian assistance during the 2015 war.[1] An AJC analysis, by contrast, describes them as becoming a “full-fledged” member only after October 7, 2023.[13]

Commonly identified members include Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemen’s Houthis or Ansar Allah, and Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria.[6][7] Bashar Assad’s Syrian government was also treated as a component before the regime’s collapse.[2] Membership is not formally fixed, and sources differ over whether particular governments, militias, and Palestinian organizations should be called members, partners, or proxies.

The Iraqi component includes Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyad al-Shuhada, and the Badr Organization.[5] Several joined Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces to fight ISIS while retaining ties to Tehran. Their participation in official political or security structures alongside their Iranian relationships illustrates how axis organizations can serve local constituencies and Iranian regional policy simultaneously.[5]

Hezbollah has historically been Iran’s most powerful regional partner and has served as an intermediary for Arabic-speaking forces, including militias in Syria.[5][3] The broader network is nevertheless not a NATO-style alliance. It is a loose, decentralized association whose members receive Iranian funding, weapons, training, intelligence, and logistical support without entering binding mutual-defense agreements.[1][2] Its membership spans secular Syria under Assad, Sunni Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite Hezbollah, and locally focused Iraqi and Yemeni movements.[4]

Coordination includes leadership meetings, weapons transfers, intelligence cooperation, training, and operational planning. INSS reports that Iran established a joint operations framework involving Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, pro-Iranian forces in Syria, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis. During Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, a Beirut operations room reportedly coordinated intelligence, tactical actions, personnel movements, and equipment transfers.[2]

Iran supports network members with money, weapons, training, tactics, guidance, and operational advice. Documented weapons include unmanned aircraft systems, ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship systems, explosive-boat technology, and mines.[6] AJC reports U.S. estimates that Iran provided Hezbollah with more than $700 million in 2020, supplied Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad with more than $100 million annually, and spent more than $16 billion on Assad and associated forces from 2012 through 2020.[5]

Support also includes personnel placement, recruitment, intelligence, transportation, and logistical coordination. In Syria, the Combating Terrorism Center found that training was the most frequently documented form of support, followed by joint attacks and funding.[3] These relationships let Iran act against Israel and the United States while retaining some plausible deniability and reducing the risk of immediate direct confrontation.[14]

Saleh al-Arouri illustrated the importance of personal brokers. He financed and organized Hamas terrorist cells in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Jordan, facilitated weapons and funding, and helped deepen Hamas’s ties with Iran and Hezbollah.[9] His killing on January 2, 2024 prompted threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-aligned organizations.[9]

Iranian influence does not make every operation an Iranian order. The ODNI assessment says partners have “their own calculus for attacks,” even while documenting Iranian advice, encouragement, direction, and coordination.[6] This combination of patronage and autonomy is central to understanding the network.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.[5] Iran subsequently mobilized its regional network: Hezbollah began attacking Israel from Lebanon the next day, the Houthis attacked Israel and Red Sea shipping, and Iraqi and Syrian militias struck Israeli and American targets.[15][5] The resulting rocket, drone, and missile attacks expanded a conflict that began in the western Negev into a regional war.[16]

The first Houthi barrage against Israel, launched almost two weeks after October 7, reportedly consisted of five cruise missiles and approximately 30 unmanned aerial vehicles.[17] The campaign was associated with a strategy called “unification of the fronts,” intended to pressure Israel from several directions and prevent it from concentrating all its military power against Hamas in Gaza. Houthi representatives declared that they were “in complete coordination with… the axis of resistance.”[17]

Iranian-aligned militants conducted roughly 175 attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria from October 2023 through February 2024, including a drone attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. servicemembers.[6] In the Red Sea, where approximately 12 percent of global shipping passes, Houthi attacks reportedly caused traffic at Israel’s port of Eilat to fall by 80 percent and forced Israeli shipping companies onto longer routes.[17] On July 19, 2024, a Houthi drone killed an Israeli civilian in Tel Aviv; Israel struck Houthi-controlled port facilities at Hodeida the next day.[13]

Israeli operations in 2024 killed Hassan Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah commanders and severely degraded Hezbollah’s military capabilities.[5] INSS later described severe damage to Hezbollah, the collapse of Assad’s regime, and growing pressure on Iraqi militias as major blows to the network’s cohesion.[2]

The Axis of Resistance confronts Israel with potential military pressure from several directions while Iran’s nuclear program adds a separate strategic danger. The Reut Institute described the Second Lebanon War of 2006 as exposing weaknesses in Israel’s national-security approach and said the Resistance Network had “effectively frustrated” Israel in the political-security-diplomatic arena despite its military capabilities.[8] A scholarly analysis identifies the possibility of Iran transferring nuclear material or technology to Hezbollah, Hamas, or other terrorist groups on Israel’s borders as a serious Israeli security concern.[18]

The network also targets Israel’s civilian home front. The Reut document identifies the Gulf War, the Second Palestinian Uprising, the Second Lebanon War, and conflict around Gaza from 2005 to 2008 as confrontations in which the home front became a central target and decisive theater.[8] Rockets, missiles, and drones therefore threaten civilian resilience as well as military forces.

Iran and Hezbollah have attacked Jewish communities outside the Middle East. The July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires killed 85 people and injured more than 300.[10] This record demonstrates that the threat to Jewish life has not been confined to Israel’s immediate borders.

A Tikvah Fund analysis presents the axis as offering continuous conflict in opposition to the peace, economic cooperation, and normalization represented by the Abraham Accords.[16] The ADL describes the network’s shared aim as destroying Israel and striking Jewish targets, while Iranian-aligned rhetoric has repeatedly called for Israel’s elimination.[9]

The extent of Iranian control is one of the network’s central analytical disputes. Multiple sources describe its members as compatible partners rather than a unified command structure.[1][2] INSS says Iran never established binding alliances or continuous direct control, even though it retained substantial influence through money, weapons, training, intelligence, and logistical support.[2]

Examples of divergence include the Houthis’ seizure of Sana’a in September 2014 despite Iranian advice not to attack the capital, Iraqi militias’ reported attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in November 2021 without Iranian support, and Hezbollah’s limited response during Iran’s April 2024 attack on Israel.[2] The Houthis continue to pursue an autonomous Yemeni agenda, while Iraqi militias vary in their loyalty to Tehran.

Hamas likewise demonstrated independence when it broke with Assad during the Syrian civil war, prompting Iran to cut funding in 2012.[5] Its Sunni Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood identity distinguishes it from Iran and Hezbollah, while its later return to Iranian support reflected both material needs and regional isolation.[11]

A 2026 Jerusalem Post commentary summarizes the distinction as “patronage does not equal control.” It argues that Hezbollah faces Lebanese political constraints, the Houthis possess greater freedom of action in Yemen, and Iraqi militias balance dependence on Iran with integration into Iraq’s political system.[19] The overlapping Sunni-Shiite, intra-Sunni, and anti-ISIS conflicts further complicate any depiction of the axis as a single war or command.[11]

By 2025–2026, the network had suffered major damage. Hezbollah’s leadership was decapitated and its military power severely degraded, Assad’s regime had fallen, Iraqi militias faced pressure to halt attacks and disarm, and Hamas’s survival was threatened.[2] These losses weakened Iran’s strategic depth and the cohesion of the system it had developed over decades.

Assessments of the damage vary. A World Jewish Congress editorial published in March 2025 called the Houthis the “last remaining branch” after characterizing Hamas and Hezbollah as neutralized.[20] A 2026 Jerusalem Post commentary instead argues that the axis persists but increasingly resembles a fragmented network whose members prioritize local survival and do not operate under constant centralized command.[19]

INSS cautions against declaring the network finished. Iran has continued efforts to preserve and rebuild Hezbollah’s capabilities, oppose the disarmament of Iraqi militias, and support Houthi attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping.[2] The IRGC’s Quds Force and Iran’s relationships with regional terrorist organizations remain important parts of Tehran’s strategy.[7] Iran continues to treat these organizations as components of its deterrent power and as a means of confronting Israel and the United States while limiting direct exposure.[14]

The most significant dispute concerns Iran’s responsibility for the October 7 attack. CRS reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed in February 2024 that Iranian leaders “did not orchestrate nor had foreknowledge of” the attack. The Biden Administration nevertheless described Iran as broadly complicit and Hamas’s primary backer, while a congressional hearing argued that Hamas depended on years of Iranian funding, training, and material assistance.[21] These positions distinguish specific foreknowledge from long-term structural enablement, but the underlying official source could not be independently retrieved during this review.

Accounts of the network’s origin also emphasize different stages. The concept existed as a rhetorical Iranian goal after the 1979 revolution, while the recognizable coalition crystallized during Syria’s civil war around 2011.[1][3] Hezbollah’s establishment in the 1980s and Iran’s subsequent relationships with Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian, and Yemeni organizations formed the bridge between those phases.

The label itself remains contested. Iran and aligned organizations use “Axis of Resistance” as an affirmative self-description, while the ADL, AJC, and WJC characterize it as an Iranian-backed proxy or terrorist network.[9][5] INSS warns that the term obscures significant differences among secular Syria, Sunni Palestinian organizations, Shiite Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis.[4] Sources broadly agree that treating these actors as a single centralized command overstates the coherence of a decentralized and flexible network.[2]