IntelBrief: Iran’s Proxy Network Provides Tehran with Strategic Depth in the Middle East

Bottom Line Up Front

• With Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza underway and Houthi rebels in Yemen firing missiles toward Israel, the risk of regional escalation by Iran’s various proxies has reached dangerous new heights.
• A day before today’s planned speech by Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, the group claimed to have simultaneously attacked nineteen positions in Israel, representing the largest escalation of fighting along the Israeli-Lebanese border yet.
• Iran’s foreign minister on Wednesday threatened to force Israel and its international supporters to “pay a huge price” if they did not immediately end the war.
• A coordinated attack by the panoply of Iranian proxies is made possible through Iran’s “unity of fronts” strategy, which seeks to encircle Israel from all sides in an effort to barrage Israeli towns, villages, and cities with high-tech, Iranian-supplied weaponry.