After nearly six months of the war sparked by the terrorist Hamas movement following the bloody and terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, Iran's role in this war seems clear, and Iran's goals appear more evident by its own admission, not just analysis and conclusions that weren't lacking evidence and proof. But as they say, confession is the most potent form of evidence.
In his Iranian New Year speech, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said, "The patience of the Palestinian people, Hamas, and all the factions in Lebanon and Iraq destroyed the Americans and their calculations in the region." Khamenei went on, "The resistance front was formed to confront the ongoing injustice of the Zionist criminals." "The resistance unveiled its capabilities and confused the enemy... The resistance power confused America's miscalculations about the region.'
This is Iran's real aim in this war: confusing America's calculations in the Middle East and forcing the US to recognize Iran's influence and its terrorist militia proxies. The goal isn't liberating Jerusalem or Palestine, as terrorist militia leaders claim or propagandize. Otherwise, the Supreme Leader would have proclaimed that openly, aware it would resonate and gain Iran sympathy in the Arab and Islamic worlds. But he didn't mention it. It's all about proving the "resistance" capabilities funded and armed by Iran and shaping new strategic realities while awaiting negotiations with the US and West over dividing Middle East influence per Iranian designs.
Certainly, the Iranian regime doesn't care about the bloodshed in Gaza. But it cares about the confrontation between the Israeli army and the terrorist Hamas to measure this" resistance" arm's performance and whether its investment achieved set goals, ultimately trying to influence regional and international dynamics reflecting its power to gain more trust from allies like China and Russia.
Iran's vision of influencing international dynamics isn't new or fleeting. Khamenei identified three features of the changing world order: US isolation, Asia's rising power, and spreading "resistance" ideology. He believes in global power transition, with a new order emerging that Iran wants to shape serving its interests.
The spread of the narrative and the front of the so-called resistance are now at a crucial moment in Gaza, Yemen, and southern Lebanon, as Iran's proxies confront Israel and the US to counter the normalization of Israeli-Arab relations and destabilize the isolation of its radical resistance axis. Tehran sees this pivotal moment as a bottleneck determining the strategic struggle between moderation and extremism, pushing hard behind the scenes, hoping to win this proxy war and declare the start of a post-American era in the Middle East that it has long awaited.
What's going on with the Houthi threats in the Red Sea, the actions of sectarian militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, falls under Iran's proxy conflicts. Tehran asserts that all of these are "resistance" factions that form the "strategic depth" of the Iranian regime. Khamenei himself affirmed this in a meeting with Qassem Soleimani's family.
This means the terrorist militia groups act as an advanced defensive wall for the Iranian regime, fighting proxy wars on its behalf, even if only some of their goals align, as with Hamas not seeking a Palestinian state but rather conditions like prisoner releases and a return to how things were before the October 7th terrorist attack. All the bloodshed of innocent men, women, and children in Gaza was a paltry price to pay in Hamas's pursuit of a prisoner swap deal.
Some analysts of Iranian ideology argue that the regime's patience in realizing its goals explains much of what is currently happening: It consolidates the pillars of Iran's expansionist project while undermining the efforts of strategic adversaries, such as efforts toward Israeli-Arab normalization. This is also part of Iran's response to key events such as the killing of Soleimani.
However, the leadership in Tehran would not jeopardize the regime with military operations that could lead to a retaliatory strike by the US and Israel. In Iranian strategic thinking, rooted in the historical Persian patience embodied in the famous Iranian handmade carpet weaving, the focus is on achieving goals quietly by indirect means - with arms and proxies, as is the case now.
In this way, the regime is slowly building up sources of power and deterring opponents. For one, while the US and Israel are preoccupied with the Gaza war and Red Sea threats, Iran's nuclear capabilities are reportedly advancing at a rapid pace.
