For four decades, Iran poured billions of dollars, weapons and military minds into a grand defense project: building up a network of anti-Israel militias in the Middle East known as the “Axis of Resistance” that would join Iran if a war with Israel broke out.
The stunning series of Israeli strikes on Iran on Friday underscored just how degraded that axis has become over the past year, with few expecting those armed groups to meaningfully respond to the Israeli aggression, experts say.
In the clearest sign of that weakened stance, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, seen as Iran’s most powerful proxy, condemned the Israeli attack in a statement but stopped short of vowing any military action in response — a notable omission from a group that has long served as the central pillar of the axis.
“The axis hasn’t been fully destroyed, but it has been significantly diminished beyond the point of return,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “It has been transformed into an axis of sitting ducks waiting for the next Israeli strikes rather than taking initiative and pushing Israel into the defense, as was the case just a few years ago.”
Iran fostered the web of armed groups — including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen and militias in Iraq — to enable them to carry out attacks on Israel and to provide Iran with valuable allies in the region that could serve as a deterrent against Israeli attacks on Iran itself.
After the deadly Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s devastating invasion of Gaza, many of those groups carried out their own strikes against Israel. But in the year and a half since, Israel launched audacious attacks on those militias in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, and the response from the Axis has grown increasingly muted.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah is battered after its 14-month war with Israel that wiped out the group’s top brass, destroyed large chunks of its arsenal and left the country with a multibillion-dollar bill for reconstruction.
Its stinging defeat also spurred political momentum against the group, undoing its once iron grip on Lebanon’s politics, after many Lebanese blamed Hezbollah for dragging the country into one of its deadliest and most destructive wars.
Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region.
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