Only a few years ago, Iran and its allies were at their height of power and influence.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen were a small but formidable militia, stymying international shipping in the Red Sea. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad was finding his way back to the Arab fold after years of isolation.
And Iran itself, despite being battered by years of sanctions, was proving its value as an ally to Russia, supporting the Kremlin in its war with Ukraine.
Fast forward, and those allies and proxy militias are nowhere to be found. Iran is the most isolated it has been since the early years of the Islamic Republic, its theocracy on its own as it confronts among the most severe threat to its rule in decades with attacks by Israel and now the United States.
While its Arab neighbors and allies like Russia and China were quick to condemn Israel’s attacks on Iran, they have stopped short of offering any concrete support. Iran no longer has an ally in Syria since the ouster of the Assad regime.
And its network of militias are battered after a year and a half of war with Israel. Hezbollah, once seen as Iran’s most powerful proxy, has not launched a single attack on Israel since its latest bombardment of Iran began. After the United States attacked Iran, the Houthis said they were poised to resume attacks on the Red Sea, but it is not clear they can provide substantial support for Iran.
“What we’re witnessing now across the region is nothing short of the collapse of Iran’s decades-long strategy and ability to project influence,” said Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute based in Washington.
That defense doctrine had guided the Islamic Republic since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1979 and the subsequent invasion of Iran by neighboring Iraq, which set off an eight-year war. Iranian leaders came away from that conflict determined to never again be isolated in the face of foes or aggressors, experts say.
In the decades that followed, Iran invested billions of dollars, tens of thousands of weapons and its best military minds into building up a web of proxy militias that could allow it to project power and influence across the Middle East while keeping conflict away from Iranian soil.
Those groups — including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and militias in Iraq — provided Iran with allies on or near Israel’s border that could be a deterrent against Israeli attacks on Iran and carry out attacks on Israel.
“The return on investment has been significant,” Mr. Maksad said.
By around 2020, Iran was at its height of projecting power and influence through its proxies. At the same time, the Gulf governments, which see it as a rival in the region and were warming to Israel as a potential ally, decided that diplomacy was a more pragmatic approach to dealing with Iran.
Iran’s alliances with key players like Russia and China were the deepest they had ever been, and the Kremlin was investing more in the country than ever before. Backed by that support, Iran managed to cement its status in a region where it is otherwise an outsider. Iran is predominantly Persian-speaking and overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim; elsewhere, most people speak Arabic and are Sunni Muslims.
But in the years since, a series of missteps and miscalculations set in motion the demise of Iran’s network of power, experts say.
A U.S. drone strike in 2020 killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Qassem Soleimani, who managed Iran’s proxy forces. Those forces never fully recovered from his loss. While Mr. Soleimani managed them in a decentralized way, his successor sought a higher degree of coordination between the groups, which left them vulnerable.
“That turned this network into a much more bureaucratic endeavor, which exposed it more to Israel’s intelligence penetration,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group.
And since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the network has been battered.
Hamas, which long governed in Gaza, has lost thousands of fighters after more than a year of war with Israel, and its ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire is severely weakened. In Lebanon, Israel wiped out Hezbollah’s top leaders, destroyed much of its arsenal and badly damaged its political sway in the country. In December, the Assad government in Syria fell. It had been one of Iran’s closest allies in the region, providing a critical land bridge for funneling cash and weapons to its proxies in Lebanon and beyond.
Even as its proxies were being degraded, Iran appeared reluctant to entangle itself in any direct confrontation with Israel to support those groups. That decision that cost Iran its credibility.
“Overall, it brought a lot of these groups to the conclusion that this is not a network that is based on the concept of one for all and all for one, but rather only the latter that applies,” Mr. Vaez said.
As a result, those proxies are either unable or unwilling to respond in Iran’s moment of greatest need. Both Hezbollah and the Iran-backed Iraqi militias face intense domestic pressure from their supporters and their countries’ leaders not to engage in the current conflict with Israel.
The Houthis remain a wild card. The group reached a deal with the United States in May to halt strikes against American vessels in the Red Sea. But a Houthi military spokesman on Saturday, before the U.S. strike on Iran, said the group would again target U.S. ships “in the event the Americans become involved in the attack and aggression against Iran.”
Other foreign allies have made clear that their diplomatic ties do not extend to any kind of defense pact.
For Russia, entangling itself risks alienating the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, two increasingly important Russian partners, which would not welcome a more powerful Iran. And Russia’s forces are already tied down in Ukraine.
While Arab leaders have tried to calm tensions and dissuade the United States from getting involved, they have also made clear they are not likely to intervene. Some are even continuing — in private — to talk about partnership with Israel and a desire to weaken Iran.
The message many Arab leaders have conveyed to Iran is that they “will stay out of this fight and want to ensure that Iran does not target them in any way as things escalate,” said Randa Slim, a nonresident fellow at Johns Hopkins’ Foreign Policy Institute.
“Iran has not been isolated since the end of the Iran-Iraq war,” Ms. Slim added. “For them, this is an existential threat.”
Vivian Nereim contributed reporting.
Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region.
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