Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” was designed to keep war away from Iranian territory. The irony of the recent conflict is that when Iran itself came under direct attack, the network did not respond as a single military formation. Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi militias and Hamas each calculated their response through the prism of their own interests, constraints and vulnerabilities. The lesson is significant: Iran’s regional network remains an important instrument of power, but it is increasingly a network of partners with divergent priorities rather than a command structure that Tehran can activate at will.

I encountered an early indication of this complexity while commanding 15 Punjab in Lebanon in 2007 as part of the UN peacekeeping force. I spent considerable time with Lebanese Armed Forces officers trying to understand their institution and, at times, asking the blunt question of why the Lebanese Army was not stronger than Hezbollah. One explanation I encountered was rooted in Iran’s strategy since the 1980s. After the Islamic Revolution, Iran began cultivating armed partners abroad and deployed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to train Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The underlying logic was straightforward: a relatively weak conventional military could compensate by developing forward defences through allied armed groups, projecting Iranian power while keeping the battlefield away from Iran. For decades, this strategy worked remarkably well. Hezbollah became Iran’s most formidable regional partner, while Iranian support helped build a network stretching through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and, in a different ideological category, the Palestinian movement Hamas. The network provided Tehran with strategic depth and multiple pressure points against Israel and the United States. But the events since 7 October 2023 have exposed the limits of the model.

The Hamas attack triggered a regional cascade that eventually brought direct war to Iran itself. Hezbollah has been severely weakened, the Assad regime in Syria has disappeared, and Iran’s land corridor through Syria to Lebanon has been disrupted. The Iraqi government is also pressing armed groups to bring weapons under state control, although powerful militias continue to resist full........

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