Axis of Resistance

The Axis of Resistance is an informal Iran-led military coalition that operates across West Asia. It currently unites a variety of non-state armed groups aligned with Iranian state interests and committed primarily to countering the influence of Iran's rivals in the region: the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and sometimes Turkey. It is supported by North Korea and Venezuela and formerly included Syria, which hosted both Iranian troops and allied non-Iranian fighters until the fall of the Assad regime in 2024. The "Axis" in question mainly consists of Shia Islamist militant organizations, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic Resistance and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen. It intermittently includes certain Palestinian militant organizations (typically Sunni Islamist), such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Iran's sustenance of this coalition is thought to be motivated in part by a desire to keep Iranian territory free of armed conflict by fighting in other countries through Shia proxy forces, which pursue domestic interests while collectively mobilizing for a shared broader goal of militarily exhausting Israel and imposing a cost on United States foreign policy in the Middle East. The United States designates most of the coalition's members as terrorist organizations, but between 2014 and 2017, the United States military and Iranian proxy forces under Qasem Soleimani effectively conducted their offensives in unison during the War against the Islamic State. On several occasions, the Axis of Resistance has carried out direct attacks on United States troops in Iraq. Through the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian government had been spending an estimated US$700 million annually on providing extensive military and logistical support to the coalition's members, but this expenditure began dwindling after 2019 as a result of international sanctions against Iran. The Middle Eastern crisis, which began with the October 7 attacks against Israel in 2023, has weakened the Axis of Resistance and the strategy behind it, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. The network suffered significant and repeated setbacks to Israeli military operations over the course of the Gaza war, the Israel–Hezbollah conflict, and the Twelve-Day War. It was also greatly disrupted by the 2024 Syrian opposition offensives, which entirely reversed the progress of the Iranian intervention in the Syrian civil war. The rest of the Axis of Resistance remains intact as of December 2024.