July 17, 2025

SHARE |

Iran’s Axis of Resistance Coalition Loosens

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Regional and global officials are assessing the capabilities and intentions of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” coalition after a year of setbacks caused by Israeli and U.S. military operations and the Assad regime’s collapse. There is a consensus that the Axis is not capable of constituting a deterrent to Israeli or U.S. attacks on Iranian territory that Tehran had envisioned when it poured billions of dollars worth of arms and funding into the Axis groups over the past two decades. However, there is also broad agreement that Axis participants represent key ethno-sectarian constituencies in the countries where they operate, suggesting that efforts by Israeli or U.S. officials to pressure Arab state authorities to dismantle the Axis groups are unlikely to succeed. Governments in control of the countries where Axis members operate uniformly fear that attempting to disarm them risks sparking civil conflict.

Since the Axis largely stood down during Israeli and U.S. bombardment of Iran in June, some Iranian officials now question the wisdom of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s insistence on investing large state resources to build and empower the Axis partners. Supporters of the Supreme Leader, particularly key commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), assert the Axis can still constitute a key instrument through which Iran projects power throughout the region. Other regime leaders, particularly Shia clerical ideologues, continue to see the Axis as a vehicle through which Iran can undermine Israel’s legitimacy and strategically pressure it on a “unity of fronts.” Internal critics of Iran’s reliance on the Axis, emboldened by the relative ease with which Israel was able to strike and strategically degrade Axis groups, assert the regime should instead focus on winning back public support by tackling domestic problems. These and other domestic critics argue for returning to nuclear negotiations with the U.S., in part in order to achieve the relief from U.S. sanctions required to improve domestic economic conditions.

Some Iranian leaders have expressed surprise and disappointment that none of the Axis members, with the exception of the Houthi movement of Yemen, acted in Iran’s defense during the 12-day war against Israel. The stand-down indicates Axis members largely calibrate their operations according to potential repercussions within the countries they operate, rather than as reflexive supporters of Tehran. Some Iranian strategists argue that rearming Axis members will trigger a backlash against Iran among Arab leaders who, over the past few years, have built bridges to Tehran. Still, others maintain that the fall of the Assad regime in December, which was Iran’s main Arab state partner, complicates the IRGC-Quds Force’s efforts to rearm Axis members, particularly Lebanese Hezbollah.

No matter the outcome of the Iranian leadership’s debate about the ongoing value of the Axis, coalition members appear to be calibrating their actions primarily to benefit their own interests – not those of Tehran. In some cases, their policies and operations might benefit Iran, but in some cases Axis members are complicating Tehran’s calculations. The Houthi movement (Ansarallah) in Yemen has been relatively alone among its Axis partners in continuing to implement its anti-Israel, pro-Hamas policy, despite the effects of the U.S.-led Operation Rough Rider bombing campaign in March-May, as well as periodic Israeli air strikes on key Houthi-controlled facilities. Of the Axis partners, the Houthis face perhaps the least direct opposition on the ground, enabling Houthi leaders to shape their policies without fear of adverse consequences. The opposition Republic of Yemen government is weak and is abiding by a 2022 ceasefire with the Houthis. Saudi and Emirati leaders, who backed Yemen government forces during 2015-2022, show no inclination for restarting a ground war against the Houthis.

Operation Rough Rider degraded the Houthi missile and drone arsenal, but the Houthis nonetheless were able to continue firing some ballistic missiles on Israel – even if mostly intercepted – during the 12-day war and since. In July, the Houthis resumed attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, violating the spirit, although not necessarily the letter, of the May 5 ceasefire with the Trump administration. The group’s skiffs and drone boats sank two tankers – the Magic Seas and the Eternity C – off the coast of Hodeidah, including killing several crew members of the ships. Just yesterday, Israel claimed that it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen. The resumption of Houthi attacks represents an attempt to challenge the emerging U.S.-Israel-led regional strategic architecture, as well as to express the group’s continued support for an end to Israel’s attacks on Hamas and Gazan Palestinians. However, the Houthi attacks might prompt Trump officials to resume the U.S. air campaign against Houthi installations, and could potentially provide Israel justification to resume air attacks on Iran as the main supporter of the Houthis.

Hamas similarly remains committed to the ideology of the Axis of Resistance, and its policies and operations since its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel have been shaped primarily by its leaders’ strategic vision for ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) presence in Gaza and offshore has largely precluded Iran from resupplying the group militarily and Hamas has, by all accounts, been significantly weakened by nearly two years of air strikes and ground battles. Its leaders however, who appear to retain support among the Gaza population, continue to refuse to disarm, and insist on an end to the war in exchange for the release of the remaining 50 Israelis held hostage (living and deceased). Hamas’ resistance has benefited from the refusal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to adopt U.S. suggestions to turn over governance and security in Gaza to officials and forces linked to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA), which is dominated by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Still, a failure of U.S. and regional mediators to end the war will help Tehran paint Israel and its U.S. backer as intent on regional hegemony and repressing all Muslims.

Of all Iran’s coalition partners, Lebanese Hezbollah appears to be under the most intense pressure, emanating from within Lebanon as well as from Israel. The fall of Assad denies Iran the ability to resupply the movement by land. Despite a late November Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, Israel has continued to target the group’s surviving missile, drone, and other military assets, including at sites in Beirut and deeper into the country, where the Lebanese terror group has been trying to reposition its remaining high-quality missiles and rockets. On Tuesday, Israel attacked training camps and ammunition storage centers of the group’s elite “Radwan Forces” in the Bekaa Valley, deep inside Lebanon, demonstrating it will attack the group even far from the Israel-Lebanon border. Although Iran had long envisioned Hezbollah as a deterrent to U.S. or Israeli action on Iranian soil, the group did not conduct any operations during the 12-day war or the U.S. B-2 bomber strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hezbollah’s hesitancy to support Iran in its hour of difficulty also reflects the domestic pressure the group is under from Lebanese leaders, particularly President Joseph Aoun, to forgo its resistance activities and transform into a purely political movement representing Lebanon’s Shia Muslim community.

Another Axis participant, a coalition of Iran-aligned Shia militia organizations in Iraq, faces pressure from within and outside Iraq – in the latter case, from U.S. forces in Iraq poised to strike them if they attack U.S. military personnel there. During last month’s Israel-Iran war, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), the Iraqi group closest to the IRGC-Quds Force, threatened to target U.S. interests and bases in the region if Washington got involved. Yet, neither KH nor any other Iraqi group took definitive, confirmed action against U.S. troops, despite the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in late June. The groups’ exercise of restraint reflects not only concerns about potential U.S. retaliation against them, but also the growing pressure from Baghdad to integrate all militia organizations – grouped under an official umbrella known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) – into the national chain of command. Iraq’s National Assembly has been considering legislation to integrate the groups since March. The legislation reflects U.S. official statements that PMF groups should operate under the direct authority of the Iraqi commander-in-chief, the prime minister, rather than maintaining “allegiance to Iran.”  Iraq’s national elections on November 11 might return Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to office, and potentially strengthen his hand in curbing the autonomy of the Iran-aligned armed groups and further distance Iraq from Iran’s Axis of Resistance coalition.

At the same time, the Iran-aligned groups have sought to message Baghdad and Washington that they still wield significant capabilities and an intent to reduce U.S. influence in the country. Within the past week, two drone attacks on oil facilities in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region were attributed by Iraqi Kurdish leaders to Iran-aligned groups. The drone attack on Tuesday on an oil field in Iraq’s Dohuk province set the field ablaze. The attack came the same day Iraq signed an agreement with the oil field’s operator, U.S.-based HKN Energy Ltd., for investment in a field at another location. U.S. officials in Baghdad responded with a statement saying: “The Government of Iraq must exercise its authority to prevent armed actors from launching these attacks against sites within its own territory, including locations where Iraqi and international companies have invested in Iraq’s future.” Still, Trump officials are looking to al-Sudani and his government to curb attacks by Iran-aligned groups and avoid further direct U.S. military action against Iraqi armed groups.