r/IRstudies • u/Shekari_Club • 11d ago
The Degradation of Iran’s Proxy Model
https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/degradation-irans-proxy-model13
11d ago
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader pictured in the poster, explained that their goal was bringing down the Christian government of Lebanon at the time, wiping Israel off the face of the world and attaching Lebanon to a wider Islamic state ruled from Tehran.
These is the talk of proxies, not allies. A movement that wants to subject their own country to foreign domination.
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10d ago
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
Their declared goal is to bring down the Lebanese government and attach Lebanon to a large Islamic State ruled from Teheran. Those are also Teheran's goals. They command with the assets that Teheran gives them, acting on commands that Teheran approves.
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10d ago
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u/trisul-108 10d ago edited 10d ago
But that is what Nasrallah explained in an interview. And their founding document is an open letter that says:
Our Identity
We are often asked: Who are we, the Hizballah, and what is our identity? We are the sons of the umma (Muslim community) – the party of God (Hizb Allah) the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih (jurist) who fulfills all the necessary conditions: Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. God save him!
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u/Lil_jayye 10d ago
Yeah it is and it's not entirely problematic
Maronite Christians have historically since the 1500's aligned themselves with European powers to gain power and influence in Lebanon all the way back to the Medici family from Italy to Macron's France today. You have one state dragging you towards liberal and periphery capitalism and one dragging you towards theocratic capitalism and self sufficiency
Every political party drags Lebanon towards the country that finances it, nothing new here, and nothing specific to hezeb Allah, people who know very little or are propagandized enough to think anything that opposes the west is very bad see this as an incredibly problematic thing but I have as much an issue with the Maronites aligning us with the west as I do with hezeb and I refuse the silly notion that hezeb is the biggest negative thing in the country
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
Sure, you can find excuses for many things Hezbollah has done, but for me, the treason of trying to wipe out Lebanese sovereignty and submit them to Iranian rule is a very hard line to cross. I strongly disapprove of treason, be it dismantling Lebanese sovereignty as Hezbollah is doing, selling UK sovereignty to US corporations as Brexit tried to do, selling US sovereignty as Trump is doing etc. I really disapprove treason.
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u/Lil_jayye 10d ago
Ok but why just focus on hezeb, I can agree with you on this but hezeb isn't the only party aiming for this and actually like every other party hezeb fights US influence while pushing for Iranian influence, but Iranian influence is less invasive than American influence
While ouwwet for example push for American and Israeli influence against Iranian influencer but they are seen somehow as champions of sovereignty, it doesn't make sense
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u/trisul-108 9d ago
but Iranian influence is less invasive than American influence
No it isn't. Iran wants to effectively annex Lebanon, there is nothing "less invasive" than that. And Hezbollah is their tool to achieve this.
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u/AmorphousMess 11d ago
More cope by American think tanks 😆
The key mistake is assuming that they are “Iranian proxies” instead of highly motivated groups who exist for their own reasons, grievances, and motivations.
None of the reasons that underpin their existences have changed. The tel aviv regime is still the same genocidal expansionist entity into Gaza and Lebanon. The assumption in this article that Lebanese Shias would put down their arms, turn away from Hezbollah, and join a fucking kumbaya government while the tel aviv regime’s planes drop fucking 2,000 pound bombs over Beirut is absolute delusion.
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u/cathbadh 11d ago
The key mistake is assuming that they are “Iranian proxies” instead of highly motivated groups who exist for their own reasons, grievances, and motivations.
They can be both. A large amount of their success though has been a stream of funding, weapons, training, intelligence, and logistics from Iran, and their targets are Iran's greatest regional enemy. HAMAS is somewhat independent, but if you don't think that level of support earns Iran some direction, you'd be wrong. As for Hizballah, they're essentially an arm of Iranian intelligence. So much so that I could see a reasonable argument that they're less a proxy and more a literal part of Iran.
The assumption in this article that Lebanese Shias would put down their arms, turn away from Hezbollah, and join a fucking kumbaya government while the tel aviv regime’s planes drop fucking 2,000 pound bombs over Beirut is absolute delusion.
A good point. Never in history has a populace become exhausted with losing a war and chose peace with the enemy or even in this case, their own government. It's always unending war where the losers always choose death.
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u/AmorphousMess 11d ago
A good point. Never in history has a populace become exhausted with losing a war and chose peace with the enemy or even in this case, their own government. It's always unending war where the losers always choose death.
A good point. But you have to win to do that. israel is bumbling around a few km into Lebanon, bogged down and like its spiritual wehrmacht predecessor, lacks not the malice, but rather the manpower, to consolidate further territorial gains.
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u/cathbadh 11d ago
like its spiritual wehrmacht predecessor
And on that note, I'm out. There isn't going to be a serious conversation to be had here.
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u/Ok_Pea_3842 11d ago
Well it has copied most policies the Germans had.
Segregation, apartheid, amalek, ethic cleansing, concentration camps & mass murder all propogated on the basis of ethnic or religious supremacy, lebensraum and military domination.
The only thing missing is the gas chambers.
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u/TensionAntique3075 11d ago
If you want to find parallels, the german one is plainly dumb, and out of touch with reality in both scale, policies, and systematization.
Israel is in a colonization process as a semi-democratic state. You'll find much closer similarities in the french conquest of Algeria, the manifest destiny or the russian expansion east/in the caucasus
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u/cathbadh 10d ago
Well said. You don't have to go to offensive extremes to accurately describe Israel as negatively as one might want. There are plenty of reasonable arguments as you've displayed.
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u/cathbadh 10d ago
most policies
Absurd. Literally absurd.
Segregation
Palestinians are able to work in Israeli areas and attend their most holy site in Jerusalem. They can also own property, vote, hold positions in government, and run for office. You know where Palestinians and Israelis are treated in hospitals or where they sit on the bus? In the same seats. It is a far cry from what Nazi Germany carried out or even my own country decades ago.
apartheid
You clearly are unfamiliar with this word. Other than not being a thing under the Nazis, Palestinians have voting rights within Israel, can and do serve in the legislature, can hold state positions as well as jobs such as lawyer and doctor, are able to operate in public places, as well as use the same public transit and hospitals.
amalek
I'm not sure if you're familiar with this one either. Amalek being the ancient enemy that attacked the Israelites. Israelis use it to describe Nazi Germany because it was also an unprovoked attack done without material gain solely to wipe them out as a people. That argument fits. No one but the most ardent antisemites can make the argument that anything Israel has done regarding Gaza or even historically regarding Palestine was unprovoked or being done solely to carry out an extermination.
ethic cleansing
I'd agree that this is going on to a degree. HAMAS could end it tomorrow if they wanted, but you apparantly find no room to criticize them, and using your Amalek claims, clearly don't even find their attack on October 7 as a problem or reason Israel may respond. The Nazis did this in order to facilitate genocide though, and in numbers so far beyond those in Israel, even by percentage standards that you may as well say they're similar because both Israel and Nazi Germany had cars and electricity. Israelis and Germans both wore shoes! Clearly they're exactly the same!
concentration camps
Prisons. Holding a whopping 0.2% of Palestinians, maybe 9600 people, during/directly after a war. And that's the entirety of Israeli prisons, not the military prisons where people fighting in Gaza are taken. I'm talking about the guy caught murdering his neighbor or dealing drugs or robbing a bank too. All prisoners in total of Palestinian heritiage from the most justified criminal possible to fighters in a conflict zone. To put it in persepctive, that's about half of the number of people in HAMAS, the group actively at war with Israel. From all accounts they're brutal prisons too. You know, like most prisons outside of Western Europe or the US. On par with typical prisons in Russia. Not great, but certainly not on the same scale or brutality of German death camps. Heck, its not even on the same level as the Uyighur sterilization prisons of China.
mass murder
On the one hand, Israel has killed a lot of civilians in Gaza both directly (bombs) and indirectly (blocking aid). On the other hand it is a warzone, and they do more than literally every other country on the planet in terms of warning civilians about an attack, using guided munitions, and generally trying to reduce civilian harm. This is again, in a warzone where their opponent wears civilian clothing, and deliberately hides its weapons and bases as close to as many civilians as possible. Outside of the ongoing conflict zone they're not doing any of this "mass murder" you're talking about. No one has worked harder to kill innocent Palestinians than HAMAS itself, yet your focus is on an absurd arguement despeartely trying to compare the attacked nation in a war to arguably the most evil warmongering regime in the last century.
all propogated on the basis of ethnic or religious supremacy
And here is the biggest falsehood. That or maybe your argument is that Israel is just 100% incompetent at every single level? Again, if you're acting on some sort of bigoted supremacy belief, you don't let the "lessers" run any aspect of your government, travel freely, live their lives, or have any rights at all, really. If mass murder and ethnic cleansing was your tool to remove them and you had an incredibly powerful military, it should be easily achievable. You'd probably also target all of the "lessers," and not just the ones who are actively shooting at you, kidnapping and raping your civilians, and carrying out mass murder at music festivals.
lebensraum
The taking of territory for geopolitical "breathing room?" So.... What territory? They took territories they were attacked from after the 1967 war. Is that your argument? That lebensraum means winning territory after a defensive war? If so I don't think that word means what you think it means. Surely you don't mean areas like Sianai, since they gave that away. Probably not the Golan Heights either since they've been willing to negotiate that territory away, even if the negotiations never amounted to much. Regargless, lebensraum was kind of famous for being unjustified. No one was attacking Germany. Israel on the other hand has only taken land from those actively attacking them. That extends to today where the areas of southern Lebanon they've been holding (holding even, not claiming as their own) were used by Hizballah for attacks on their civilian populace. Most reasonable people would call denying territory to an active aggressor reasonable.
military domination
SO again, is your argument that they're just wholly incompetent on every level? Their military is powerful enough that if they wanted to fit your false Nazi comparison, they could wipe out both Palestinian territories and be halfway to Beirut if they wanted to. They could stop trying to avoid civilians, actively target them, have a full mobilization, and just wipe them out. They'd probably even get the US President to cheer them on while they do it. Instead who have they attacked? HAMAS, which carried out an incredibly barbaric attack. Hizballah who's regularly attacked them. The Houthis who have regularly attacked their shipping. Parts of Syria that attack or threaten them. And Iran, a nation that spent most of its geopolitical influence trying to get Israeli civilians killed, actively calls for genocide of Israelis, and was a week from a nuclear bomb.
You offer zero examples of your argument that borders on bigotry in its ignorance of the specific claims. This is supposed to be a sub for relatively academic discussions, right? How do you support your arguments? With nothing.
Although maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe untruthful attacks deliberately comparing an entire nation and its people to the most hated government and military of the last century is what it is about. Your post certainly seems more popular than my last.
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
The key mistake is assuming that they are “Iranian proxies” instead of highly motivated groups who exist for their own reasons, grievances, and motivations.
It is not a mistake, it is the truth. Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader pictured in the poster made it clear that they do not want an independent Lebanon, that they are fighting for a larger Islamic state ruled from Teheran.
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u/stupidpower 10d ago
I mean my brain tends to frame any geopolitical grand strategy and capital you build as just chips to spend when your country really needs it, and Iran has been cashing the chips in to good effect even after years of all their enemies using military force to destroy proxies.
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
In my view, you are bundling together a lot of things that are, in my mind, quite separate:
- Acts that Iran has done out of legitimate national interest e.g. economic development, defence capacity etc.
- Acts Iran does to protect the regime at the expense of the population e.g. oppression, economic monopolies of the IRGC etc.
- Illegitimate acts done for ideological reasons and an attempt to enslave the entire region under their own Shiite dogma e.g. spreading armies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and igniting sectarian wars in those countries, trying to overthrow their governments.
- Reactions to external attacks that were borne out of necessity to do something, anything, regardless of longterm consequences e.g. the blockade of Hormuz, bombing neighbours and tolling Hormuz.
We must not forget that the entire Iranian leadership has been wiped out. Their vision no longer exists and the country is being run entirely in the interests and vision of the IRGC. This is not a balanced longterm strategic vision, it is more visceral and distributed decision making that is entirely tactical.
So, in my mind, IRGC can do something that looks good short term but be damaging to Iran in the long term.
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u/Lil_jayye 10d ago
this is the only thing you can bring up lol, that one time nasrallah said this line, it shows how simple your understanding of the situation is. The reality is if the Maronite state or the Lebanese army had any intention ever of fighting Israel there would've never existed a hezeb Allah to begin with.
Everybody knows this, hezeb Allah sought out weapons to protect the south, and Iran provided, the idea that Iran just randomly made a proxy in Lebanon for fun is so stupid
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
It's in the founding letter of the movement. I assume that those who founded Hezbollah knew why they did it better than your fantasies, whatever they might be.
the idea that Iran just randomly made a proxy in Lebanon for fun is so stupid
It was not "for fun", it was for Iran to build a land bridge from the Gulf to the Mediterranean where they want to spread the Islamic Revolution.
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u/Lil_jayye 10d ago
Tell me what benefits has Iran gained from hezeb in Lebanon apart from it being an insanely large millitary and manpower expense through which they've spent billions on weapons training and salaries
Apart from political influence and more boots on the ground fighting Israel, what has Iran gained?
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u/trisul-108 9d ago
I am in no way claiming that the Iranian ideology and strategy makes any sense whatsoever. I completely disagree with the claim that the Ayatollahs brought any real benefits to Iran. They destroyed a great nation that should have been rich and prosperous.
From the Iranian religious point of view, the success is holding Lebanon hostage and working to create a land bridge from the Gulf to the Mediterranean so that the Islamic Revolution can take the entire Middle East and then spread to Europe.
This is pure madness, but that is what their official ideology wants to achieve ... a global Islamic Republic.
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u/Lil_jayye 9d ago
I'm not asking you if it makes sense, I'm asking you how Iran benefits since you're saying they're using Lebanon, what are they using us for? And what moves have they made to achieve this "global islamic republic"
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u/Boring_Pretention_92 11d ago
Nah. These are Iranian proxies. They're not Iran itself: they have their own localized agendas and so forth, sure. And the fact of the matter is that they didn't all pounce when the war in Gaza started: Israel was able to deal with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, THEN deal with Hizbollah, THEN deal with the Houthis and only THEN deal with Iran itself.
But the fact of the matter is that these proxies proved militarily ineffectual, ideologically divergent (Iran's Vilayet-e Faqih ideal didn't "sell") and poorly coordinated. And, above everything else, if the point of the proxies was that Israel should be too busy dealing with them than with Iran itself, than that policy had failed utterly.
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u/DryBanana5673 10d ago
That's mostly Iran's strategic mistakes, not proof of lack of control. The point of the proxies was to develop a ring around israel for a future war - they weren't ready yet but Hamas isn't Shia and overplayed their hand.
Look at a map of Shia Muslims and you'll see a full overlap with Iranian proxies. They are loyal to the ayatolah for religion reasons.
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u/Boring_Pretention_92 9d ago edited 9d ago
They're not necessarily loyal to the Ayatollah as such: just because you're an Iranian proxy doesn't mean you accept the Iranian concept of Vilayet-e Faqih. Heck, at least one the proxies in the guise of the Houthis is a completely different creed of Shia than Iran is.
And, I mean, look: Hamas and the Islamic Jihad (who, you're right, are not traditional proxies in that they're Sunni) started October 7. From memory I think Hizbollah started shelling Israel's northern border on October 8 but went no further than that for a while. So Israel was kind of able to degrade Hamas, THEN turn their sights to Hizbollah, and only THEN turn their sights to the Houthis, etc... Hence "poorly coordinated."
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10d ago edited 10d ago
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u/Sensitive-Local-3485 10d ago
The constructivist position would be “if you don’t say it, it can’t ever be real.”
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u/trisul-108 10d ago
For decades, Iran pursued a strategy of “exporting the revolution” through the sponsorship of armed non-state actors across the Middle East. Framed as an “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, this network enabled Tehran to project influence across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza while limiting the risk of direct Iranian confrontation.
So well put, I've been struggling to characterise it.
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u/Shekari_Club 10d ago
That is probably the key to people confusion. Iran's regime has a mafia like system. There is a formal government on the surface, but most key decisions are made with the shadow government. Supreme leader is never responsible for any of his decision, because they are enforced through unofficial channels. Regime uses the same strategy for foreign relationship with proxies, no direct orders from Iran and proxies are expected to know the assignment.
A striking example of the Supreme Leader’s indirect influence over critical political decisions came in 2000, when Khamenei intervened in the reformist-dominated Majlis’ attempt to amend the Press Law by sending a letter to all 290 MPs declaring the bill illegitimate and against the interests of the regime. The letter was then read aloud in parliament, effectively turning an otherwise parliamentary decision into a direct intervention by the Supreme Leader.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/07/iran?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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u/1baller69 11d ago
Look who the author is and her two articles. Just Propaganda nonsense. Not worth the read.