As Israel takes fight to Iran, where are Tehran’s terror proxies in its hour of need?

When Israel announced Operation “Rising Lion” in the wee hours of Friday morning, it marked the first time in over 50 years that the country had declared war against a sovereign state, rather than against a terrorist organization operating from foreign soil, the West Bank, or Gaza.

No small number of these organizations Israel has faced off against over the years were and are supported, funded, or even directly controlled by Iran, the country that now finds itself in Israel’s crosshairs.

Since the Iranian Revolution in Iran, the regime in Tehran has invested significant efforts in spreading its ideology among Shiite populations in the Middle East while also building up a network of terrorist organizations across the region, including Sunni groups.

The Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has in recent decades focused on supporting those organizations through financial aid, the supply of weapons and ammunition, and even training, sometimes conducted on Iranian soil.

For Iran, the terror network was both a projection of power and a shield: the groups would continually harass the Islamic Republic’s two greatest enemies, the United States and Israel, while it would remain safely siloed off from the reprisals to come. And the existence of a league of minion armies ready to come to its defense in the case of war helped deter any Western thoughts of invasion or regime change.

After October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a devastating assault on Israel, sparking the war in Gaza, the breadth of the Iranian array was put on full display, with Tehran-backed groups from Lebanon to Yemen attacking Israel in what then-defense minister Yoav Gallant called a seven-front war.

But now that Israel’s firepower is being directed against Iran itself, those proxies are suddenly nowhere to be seen. Some, like Hezbollah, have been severely weakened by Israel due to attempts to back Hamas. Others seem to have been convinced by their host countries to stay out of the fight.

Iran is now in a highly unusual and even dangerous position, forced to rely primarily on its own military power on its own soil. Thus far, this has largely consisted of successive rounds of ballistic missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force, which have caused plenty of destruction but done little to weaken Israel’s firepower.

Meanwhile, Iran has seen its home turn into a battlefield as it tries to confront Israeli attacks from Tehran to Tabriz, representing a strategic vulnerability for a country that prefers to let proxies do its dirty work on foreign ground.

Hezbollah down for the count

Iran’s support for terrorist groups abroad has been estimated at billions of dollars annually from state coffers, aid that continued in recent years despite Iran’s dire economic situation, including a sustained currency devaluation and energy shortages.

A good chunk of that money has gone to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, Iran’s most prominent client.

But after suffering heavy losses and growing opposition within Lebanon, it is now severely weakened and reluctant to confront Israel.

Hezbollah, founded in 1983 with Iranian backing, has for the past two decades served as Iran’s primary military tool against Israel, armed with long-range missiles and even precision-guided weapons.

However, since Israel began striking inside Iran on Friday, the only things launched by Hezbollah have been words. This restraint is seemingly a direct consequence of its war with Israel, during which the group launched near-daily attacks into Israel from October 2023 until it agreed to a ceasefire on November 2024.

In the final six months of the war, and particularly starting in September, the group suffered major military setbacks. Nearly its entire senior command was eliminated by Israel, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Just before that, Israel’s exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks wreaked widespread physical and psychological damage among the group’s ground forces. Some 4,000 individuals were injured in the covert op, according to Lebanese reports, the vast majority of them Hezbollah operatives.

The group’s once-formidable missile array seems to have been either largely used up or destroyed, with Syria no longer a convenient smuggling route.

As of October 2024, the IDF estimated that Hezbollah retained less than 30% of its prewar firepower.

Even after the ceasefire was signed, the IDF has continued operating regularly in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah operatives, mainly in the country’s south. Israel has struck buildings in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district twice, hitting buildings housing drone manufacturing and storage sites, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

As a result, Hezbollah is significantly weakened and far less capable of posing a threat to Israel. The organization is also facing mounting internal political pressure, with the country still recovering from heavy Israeli strikes aimed at ending Hezbollah’s attacks.

Over the past six months, two of Lebanon’s three top leadership positions have been filled by figures considered “anti-Hezbollah,” including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun. Both have made statements expressing their intention to disarm Hezbollah and affirming that the decision to go to war should rest with the state.

In a recent speech marking his government’s first 100 days, Salam noted that the Lebanese Army had dismantled over 500 weapons depots in the country’s south. While he did not specify whose depots these were, they are widely understood to have belonged to Hezbollah.

According to Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya, Lebanon’s government has conveyed a message to Hezbollah saying it would not allow the country to be part of an Iranian retaliation against Israel, stating that “the time when the organization bypassed the state in decisions of war is over.”

Lebanese authorities reportedly warned Hezbollah that whoever drags the country into war will bear responsibility, essentially warning both Iran and Hezbollah that they, not Israel, would be to blame if Israel took action in Lebanon.

These developments have placed Hezbollah in a problematic position, leading it to refrain from launching attacks on Israel, even if it retains some capacity to do so.

On Friday, hours after the Israeli operation launched, Hezbollah issued a lengthy statement strongly condemning the Israeli strikes on Iran, declaring that Israel “only understands the language of killing, fire, and destruction.”

The statement made no mention of whether or when it would respond, but a Hezbollah official told Reuters the same day that the group would not retaliate over the attacks in Iran.

Iraqi militias fold under pressure

Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran has bolstered pro-Iranian and Shiite militias in the country to deepen its influence. These groups primarily targeted the United States but also turned their weapons on Israel after October 7.

Growing internal and external pressures have brought those operations to a halt.

Since 2014, the militias in Iraq have operated under an umbrella organization known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, firing missiles at American troops stationed in the region and also battling the Islamic State terror group when the jihadist organization took control of parts of Iraq.

However, since October 7, the militias have also taken part in the regional multi-front war against Israel, apparently with Iranian backing. Throughout 2023 and 2024, they launched drones toward Israel, mainly targeting the Golan Heights and once Eilat, while simultaneously attacking American bases in Iraq. In October 2024, two IDF soldiers were killed by a drone strike launched by pro-Iranian militias in northern Golan Heights.

However, even before the second ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in December 2024, Iraq’s pro-Iranian militias agreed to halt attacks on both the US and Israel as part of an agreement with the Iraqi government.

A senior official from the al-Nujaba militia, one of the key Iraqi factions, confirmed to Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper on December 2024 that a deal had been reached to stop military activities. According to Arab media reports, the agreement was connected to the re-ascendance of US President Donald Trump and the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, which ushered in a government that opposes Iran.

It is widely believed that the United States, which supports Iraq’s government and opposes renewed attacks on its bases, has taken an active role behind the scenes. The US has not officially addressed the issue, but did claim responsibility for strikes against militia bases in Iraq in 2024 following a deadly attack on an American base.

Even as fighting between Israel and Hamas has resumed, the Iraqi militias have continued to sit out.

On June 14, the Saudi Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that the Iraqi government conveyed a message to the militias similar to the one Lebanon gave Hezbollah: Stay out of the war between Israel and Iran.

According to the report, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani held intensive talks with militia leaders, telling them that Iraq wants no part in the war.

Influential Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr is also seemingly applying pressure for the militias to stand down.

“Iraq and its people do not need new wars,” he tweeted on June 13. “We call for silencing the reckless voices calling for Iraqi involvement in the war and for listening to the voice of wisdom and the voice of the clerics.”

Syria leaves the fold

Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Iran has steadily strengthened its sway over the country, not just through direct military presence, but by using it as a key transit route for weapons to Lebanon.

Iranian-backed militias did operate there, but Syria’s principal strategic value lay in its role as a corridor, not a battlefield.

Now it is neither. When Assad took off for Moscow in early December 2024, he took Iran’s foothold in the country with him, for all intents and purposes.

Under new president Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria’s leadership has completely severed ties with Iran and denied it any beachhead in the country. The Iranian embassy has been closed, and Iranian flights have been banned from Syrian airspace.

The new Syrian regime has also issued multiple statements in recent months claiming to have seized weapons intended for smuggling into Lebanon, presumably for Hezbollah.

This dramatic shift has significantly hampered Iran’s ability to use Syrian territory to support its regional allies, as it had done for years.

Blowing off the Houthis

The Houthi rebels in Yemen are Iran’s only proxy that has continued to participate in the fighting against Israel. But the group’s abilities against Israel are limited by its distance from the country, removing any element of surprise, and its fairly modest arsenal. Since Friday, it has played a largely unnoticed role in the fighting.

The Houthis began as an independent militia that rebelled against the Yemeni government during the country’s civil war. Since 2014, the group has enjoyed financial, military, and logistical aid from Iran, which supplies the Houthis with weapons, military technology, and technical expertise.

The Houthis claim that since Friday they have launched ballistic missiles targeting important Israeli military sites. In actuality, the group launched a single ballistic missile, which slammed into a Palestinian town near Hebron, injuring several people. The group decided not to claim responsibility.

It also fired three drones at the country Saturday, all of which were downed far from Israel’s borders, according to the IDF.

Still, the group, which has withstood months of American and Israeli strikes, is at least trying to make a show of supporting Iran.

Even as Hezbollah, PMF, Hamas and others have taken a backseat, the Houthis have remained Iran’s most consistent proxy, firing ballistic missiles at Israel now and then, and vowing to keep up “support for Gaza as long as the massacre continues,” in their words.

At one time, Houthi fire on Israel was new, surprising and terrifying, but after months it seems to have lost some of that effect, with no known ace up the group’s sleeve. In the meantime, Israel appears to be ramping up its offensive against them, including through the unprecedented use of naval power.

Recent attempts to assassinate senior Houthi figures in Yemen, including the group’s chief of staff, Mohammed Abd al-Karim al-Ghamari, also point to substantial intelligence gathered by Israel on the Houthis, likely as a result of the prolonged engagement.

The Houthis’ abilities against Israel — ballistic missiles and drones shot from too far away to take the country by surprise or do much more than terrorize the population — appear to mirror Iran’s, just on a significantly smaller scale.

As Israel and Iran battle it out in a fight long foretold, the last proxy standing — a ragtag group that at one point brought global commerce to its knees — is likely to find itself a marginal player yet again.