Earlier this month, Kamleh Al-Yaseeni was supposed to accompany a friend to a hospice for the elderly in Damascus where they both volunteered, but she changed her mind to stay home with her disabled son, friends and neighbors said. It was a decision that would cost both their lives.<\/p>\n
The Syrian family died in an airstrike on the three-story building they lived in that also took out high-ranking Iranian military leaders responsible for conducting proxy operations in Syria and Lebanon. Israel neither confirmed nor denied the strike, but the attack was cited by Tehran as the reason for last weekend\u2019s missile-and-drone barrage, Iran\u2019s first direct assault on the Jewish state.<\/p>\n
With U.S. officials saying that Israel carried out retaliatory strikes on Iran early Friday, the world is waiting to see whether more is to come or if the spiral of direct reciprocal actions stops here. What is clear is that a central component of Tehran\u2019s arsenal yet to be fully deployed is its proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, ready to take on a more prominent role if called upon. <\/p>\n
What Tehran calls its \u201caxis of resistance\u201d has been a central focus of Israel\u2019s military, which has made great efforts to hunt them down \u2014 as seen in Damascus and elsewhere. Yet analysts agree their capabilities persist and Iran\u2019s proxy forces could still extract a high cost, ratcheting up the conflict at an increasingly parlous time for the broader Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greater the threat the more the axis is likely to respond forcefully and aggressively and in a coordinated manner,\u201d said Dina Esfandiary, senior adviser on Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group in London. <\/p>\n
After Friday\u2019s strike, \u201cTehran will have to rely on its proxies as much as possible\u201d in order to keep the situation \u201cmanageable,\u201d she said. \u201cBut miscalculation is possible and unpredictable in that scenario.\u201d <\/p>\n
Regardless of how any further direct confrontation between Iran and Israel plays out, Tehran is likely to lean more on its proxies to try to keep the conflict away from its territory, while Israel will surely continue to go after the threats at its borders. Above all that means Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia and political movement that is Tehran\u2019s most important regional proxy force.<\/p>\n
Early on Friday, Syria\u2019s Defense Ministry said that Israeli missiles struck its aerial defenses in the south, causing only material damage. There was no comment from Israel, but it is no secret that operatives from Iran and Hezbollah are embedded in Syrian army units there, making them frequent targets for Israel. <\/p>\n
The April 1 strike on the Damascus building was certainly a blow to both Iran and Hezbollah and a trigger for what many still fear: all-out war between Iran and Israel.<\/p>\n
Al-Yaseeni, the widow of a former Syrian diplomat in her 70s, was with her son Naji on the first floor of the building just off Mazzeh Highway, one of the Syrian capital\u2019s main thoroughfares. In the apartment directly above, Iranian military leaders responsible for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019 elite Quds Force in Syria and neighboring Lebanon were holding an urgent meeting, according to people briefed about events on the ground.<\/p>\n
The Iranian embassy had been set to move to a new apartment compound further down the same road where two siblings of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad own properties, the people said.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the embassy had been renting apartments on the second and third floors as residences for the ambassador and the consul. General Mohammad-Reza Zahedi, his deputy General Mohammad-Hadi Haji Rahimi and the five other Iranian officers killed felt it was the safest place in Damascus since a previous Israeli strike took out a senior Iranian officer in Syria in December, according to the people. <\/p>\n
It was Iran\u2019s greatest loss since the U.S. assassinated Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq four years ago, and a huge setback for Hezbollah. In an April 8 televised eulogy that lasted nearly an hour, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah hailed Zahedi, and said he was \u201cworking night and day to serve this resistance\u201d and advance its capabilities. <\/p>\n
After publicly warning that a response was coming, Iran retaliated for Zahedi\u2019s death by firing nearly 300 drones and missiles at Israel, almost all of which were intercepted. <\/p>\n
The question now is how far Tehran will go in the confrontation and what role its proxy forces can play. Starting with Hezbollah in the 1980s, Iran has built up its network of forces and alliances in the Middle East for an all-out battle scenario with Israel. Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel\u2019s subsequent invasion of Gaza are providing the pretext for both sides to look over the precipice. <\/p>\n
The proxies have a \u201ccoordinated command mechanism\u201d with Iran and could be activated on a much larger scale if \u201cthere\u2019s stronger political willingness on the Iranian side to militarily engage with Israel,\u201d said Abdolrasool Divsallar, senior scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.<\/p>\n
While missile and drone launches by Iran-backed Houthi militants against ships in the Red Sea have grabbed headlines and remain a serious threat, most of Israel\u2019s attention is on Hezbollah \u2014 designated a terrorist group by the US and others \u2014 which is believed to possess the most formidable arsenal of missiles among all groups and is present at Israel\u2019s borders in both Lebanon and Syria. <\/p>\n
Zahedi\u2019s death and Israel\u2019s killing of some 300 Hezbollah members and the almost nonstop targeting of its infrastructure and supply lines in both Lebanon and Syria since Oct. 7 have shown the group\u2019s vulnerabilities, said Lina Khatib, associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael does not need a full-on attack to achieve its goal of crippling Hezbollah; Israel is pursuing this goal through a strategy of a thousand cuts,\u201d she said. Even so, for now Hezbollah remains far from being \u201csignificantly weakened,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s an assessment shared by a Western diplomat who said that Hezbollah is still relatively active and seems untouched. Reported withdrawals of Iranian personnel in Syria could also be a sign of the Islamic Republic wanting to engage more covertly in the area to protect its supply lines to Lebanon and Hezbollah, the diplomat said, asking not to be named because of the matter\u2019s sensitivity.<\/p>\n
Four days before the strike that killed Zahedi, Israel carried out what was probably its most significant \u2014 and lethal \u2014 attack in Syria since it began targeting Iran and Hezbollah\u2019s presence in the country in 2012. It destroyed a plant near the northern city of Aleppo where warheads for missiles destined mainly for Hezbollah were being assembled, plus a depot at the city\u2019s airport used to store weapons flown in from Iran, according to people briefed on the attack. It also killed six Hezbollah operatives in their homes in Aleppo; at least 34 others were killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of facilities have been hit but Hezbollah is still extremely capable,\u201d said Matthew Levitt, a leading expert on the group who previously directed the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.<\/p>\n
Following Oct. 7, Iran has demonstrated for the first time how its proxies can operate in a synchronized and calibrated manner, according to congressional testimony last month by US Central Command chief General Michael E. Kurilla. Iran has worked for decades to \u201cstrategically encircle\u201d US allies in the region and is exploiting what it sees as \u201ca once in a generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East\u201d to its advantage, he said.<\/p>\n
In Iraq, one of Iran\u2019s main proxy groups, Kataib Hezbollah, which had several of its members killed by the US in February in retaliation for a lethal attack on American troops in Jordan, has been threatening to engage in a more regional role in support of Iran and its allies. Earlier this month, one of its commanders vowed to flood neighboring Jordan with weapons for a march on Israel.<\/p>\n
In Yemen, the Houthis\u2019 role in the event of a sustained confrontation between Iran and Israel that could potentially draw in the US and its allies may actually exceed that of \u201call of Iran\u2019s other arms in the region,\u201d estimates Adnan Al-Gabarni, a Yemen-based researcher on the group. <\/p>\n
The Houthis could completely shut down the Arabian and Red seas to all navigation, attack US military bases and assets in the region and launch drones and missiles at Israel along with other proxies in order to overwhelm missile defense systems there, he said.<\/p>\n
For all Israel\u2019s attacks and assassinations in Lebanon and Syria, US-UK strikes on the Houthis, and Washington\u2019s targeting of Iran\u2019s main proxies in Iraq, Iran\u2019s axis of resistance retains its \u201cactual capabilities,\u201d according to the Middle East Institute\u2019s Divsallar.<\/p>\n
How those proxies are mobilized if the need arises will be carefully calibrated by Tehran according to what Israel might hit inside Iran and the damage caused, Hezbollah expert Levitt said before Friday\u2019s reported strikes. Anything is possible, including attacks on Israeli and Western targets outside the Middle East. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a dangerous game,\u201d said Levitt. \u201cThere are lots of different ways this can go sideways.\u201d <\/p>\n
_____<\/p>\n
(With assistance from Mohammed Hatem.)<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n