Playing down the clock
The phony debate over Iran’s proxy network

The big talking point in Western media and think tank circles these days is how to characterise the various militant groups supported by Iran. The question of whether these groups possess autonomous agency or are mere proxies of Iran has far-reaching implications for how the West should respond to them. “The likelihood of a regional conflagration turns on the unclear intentions of Iran and the contested degree of control it exercises over the numerous linked but autonomous groups it has nurtured over the past decade in five sovereign countries,” writes a Guardian analyst. Another analyst, writing in TIME magazine, says that, “The support that Iran gives these groups – typically weapons, and advice on how to use them – doesn’t translate into the kind of power and control sponsors typically have over their proxies.” According to the New York Times, US intelligence assessments indicate Iran was surprised by Hamas’ 7 October attack. News website Politico quotes two US intelligence sources as saying, “Tehran does not have full control over its proxy groups in the Middle East, including those responsible for attacking and killing US troops in recent weeks.” It is claimed by much of the expert commentariat that Hamas, Hezbollah, the PMFs, and the Houthis, have motives and interests of their own and act in accordance with their own political beliefs and strategic interests rather than merely following Iranian diktat. 

Obfuscation for peace
It is risky to make definitive characterisations of Iran-backed groups amidst a war in Gaza and heightened tensions in the region. Saying that orders to attack Israel and US forces came from Tehran would in theory require a direct military response against Iran, or at the very least a concerted effort to destroy the proxy groups. Those who wish for de-escalation in the region – including in the US government – see the convenience in playing up the autonomy of Hamas, Hezbollah et al. Pro-Axis of Resistance voices in the West have taken full advantage of this line to shield Iran from Western retribution. Some have taken it to absurdity, with one analyst arguing in Foreign Affairs magazine that, “Iran’s reluctance to sacrifice members of its network for the sake of saving Hamas is (…) a sign the country is not the mastermind or behemoth destabilizing the region. Instead, it is a reticent actor on its back foot.” Whether the facts support assertions like this is unimportant when the claimed primary consideration is peace in our time.

National agency and transnational agendas are not mutually irreconcilable. Those who assert that Iran controls and directs a network of militant groups often play up to a certain caricature in the Western imagination of what such a network must look like: something resembling SPECTRE, with Ayatollah Khamenei as the cat-stroking villain presiding over dastardly plans for world domination from an underground lair. The reality is that Iran’s militia network hides in plain sight. In Lebanon and Iraq, it is part of the government, and in Yemen it is the government. By definition, these militant groups have beliefs and interests that are unique to their local context, and which anchor them to the societies from which they emerged. That Iran is sensitive to these local contexts, and that militant groups that it supports often engage in pragmatic politics at the local level, does not mean that they are autonomous at the regional level. Speaking about these groups, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saied Iravani, said, “We are not directing them. We are not commanding them. We have a common consultation with each other.” He went on to describe Iran’s relationship with these actors as a “defence pact,” likening it to NATO. 

A more appropriate likeness might be the Warsaw Pact. Eastern European governments of the time had their own identity and interests and were not entirely under the thumb of Moscow on domestic affairs. On international affairs (i.e. the meta conflict with the West), however, they had no choice but to toe the Kremlin line. Often, they acted as advance guards for fomenting revolutions in the Third World, and developed alliances with countries that did not want overly conspicuous dealings with Moscow: the Cuban-East German partnership, for example. Moscow could distance itself from controversial decisions or actions taken by individual Warsaw Pact members, attributing them to the sovereignty and autonomy of those countries. Iran operates in much the same way, with Hezbollah serving as chief cut-out. 

The lack of publicly available smoking gun evidence of Tehran ordering its network of militant groups to attack Israel and US forces does not mean that those orders were not given. The extensive financial, military, and political connections that militant groups have to Iran is not disputed; neither is Iran’s forty-year strategy of seeking to dominate and control its Arab neighbours. In 2015, the IRGC’s Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari said that, “The Islamic revolution is advancing with good speed, its example being the ever-increasing export of the revolution. (…) Not only Palestine and Lebanon acknowledge the influential role of the Islamic Republic but so do the people of Iraq and Syria.” Beyond its long-term aspirations for regional dominance, Iran’s immediate intention is also quite clear, and is freely admitted by pro-Tehran commentators: to force the departure of the US military from the Middle East. 

The debate over Iran’s proxy network essentially boils down to whether Tehran ordered the militant groups to attack Israel and US forces or they did so on their own volition? In dozens of high-level negotiations in Syria on sieges, ceasefires, hostage releases and the like involving Iran-backed militant groups, Iranian officials (i.e. IRGC officers) were generally active participants with ultimate authority. Short of a televised tell-all confession by Hasan Nasrallah or Yahya Sinwar, however, the full truth may never be known. In the meantime, plausible deniability is likely to net Iran an empire.  

Guilt by association       
“Iran may have provided the gun, but it was proxies that pulled the trigger. Iran is therefore not guilty.” This sums up the argument for the defence, which sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing that a lawyer representing a mob boss might say. The similarities don’t stop there. For decades, Italian-American organised crime groups in the US ran rings around law enforcement because while it was relatively easy to convict a low-level gangster for murder, it was near impossible to link the murder to the mob boss that ordered it. Historically, common law held a defendant responsible only for his own actions, so as long as a mob boss could plausibly deny instructing a hit man to murder a victim, it was hard to make a case against him. Two events changed everything. The first was the 1963 Valachi hearings where a turncoat mafiosi confessed all to a US Senate committee, forcing the FBI chief at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, to focus on the mafia after having denied that it even existed. The second and more consequential development was the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) of 1970, which made it possible to convict the bosses because it focused on patterns of behaviour as opposed to individual criminal acts. Put simply, RICO allowed law enforcement to target the criminal enterprise as a whole by bringing charges against the entire organisation, including its leaders, for engaging in a pattern of racketeering activity. Proving that the organisation existed was key. 

As the West ponders its next steps on what to do with Iran’s militant group network, much of the commentariat on the subject continues to engage in obfuscation and filibuster. No doubt some of it is well intentioned – to avert WW3 no less – but much is comprised of ideological talking points cloaked as expert analysis. Denying the existence of an overarching and centrally-run organisation of militant groups acting in unison and upon orders from the highest levels of Iran’s leadership to force a US military withdrawal from the Middle East is as foolish as denying the existence of the mafia. Time and effort would have been better spent on a mature and honest debate on what an Iran-dominated regional order might look like, and its likely impact on the peoples of the Middle East who will have to live under it. After all, that certainly seems to be where the region is headed.