The Myth of Vertical Integration in Regional Conflict: Iran and the “Axis of Resistance”

By examining the public discourse on the proxy wars, the scholarly discussions and some of the newly proposed perspectives on reconceptualizing proxy warfare, and how Iran sees the matter, this chapter seeks to address the following two sets of questions. First, how best one may understand the relations between the Iranian state including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force, on the one hand, and the Palestinian militants, on the other, and particularly whether the relations may best be captured by the oft-applied “proxy warfare” perspective or not. Second, relatedly, why Iran supports the Palestinian militants, and particularly, how Iran understands what it is doing. This chapter draws three general conclusions. First, it is untenable to think that Iran is engaging in “proxy wars” in the classical sense of the term, that is, for cutting human, transactional, material, and political costs and benefiting from operational ambiguity and deniability. Second, from the point of view of the Iranian state, those “resistance” groups are not clients or surrogates. Rather, they are primarily treated as “allies.” Third, the Iranian support to the “resistance” groups may continue as long as Iran benefits strategically from the effects and consequences of the activities that those groups engage in with the support of the Iranian state.