With Hezbollah in Lebanon in disarray and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria gone, Iran’s carefully constructed “Ring of Fire” around Israel has all but collapsed. The question now: does Tehran try to revive it, or pivot to a new playbook?
For decades, Iran’s Middle East strategy has been built on a web of militias – proxies that allowed it to threaten adversaries, expand influence, and avoid direct wars. “Iran’s reliance on militias remains central,” a U.S. defense official told Alhurra, even after the crushing blows dealt to its network in the latest war with Israel.
Washington estimates Tehran has poured more than $16 billion since 2012 into sustaining this axis: weapons, training, logistics. Hezbollah once received as much as $700 million a year, Hamas $100 million. That money bought not only rockets and training, but also political leverage across the region. Yet today that once-formidable deterrent looks hollow. Hamas is battered in Gaza. Hezbollah is leaderless and fractured. Syria is now carved up by hostile groups, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which openly opposes Iran. Only the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq remain, but their distance renders them marginal to the central conflict with Israel.
The turning point came last fall. On September 27, 2024, Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah – long the lynchpin of Iran’s regional strategy. Hezbollah, once Iran’s most reliable proxy, has since descended into chaos. Just weeks later, Assad’s sudden fall in Damascus dealt Iran another crushing blow, severing what had been its vital corridor to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. By June, Israel went further, unleashing strikes deep inside Iran that destroyed much of its air defenses, missile reserves, and nuclear infrastructure, while killing senior commanders and top nuclear scientists.
“I don’t think the Iranians have a strategy right now,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired Israeli brigadier general and head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “They’re in shock. The situation with Hezbollah, Assad, even militias in Iraq and Hamas—it’s completely different from before the war.”
A U.S. defense official noted that Iran’s method has long mixed “carrots and sticks”—a blend of intimidation and inducement designed to reduce threats to the regime and protect its economic interests. Tehran, he said, continues to funnel weapons to the Houthis and bankroll armed groups in Iraq, underscoring its commitment to a security strategy that relies, at least in part, on coercion. “Iran’s network of proxies allows it to threaten the region, conduct deniable attacks, and pursue its goals while limiting the risks of direct escalation,” the official said.
Yet others insist Iran is far from retreating. In Tehran, political analyst Hossein Royvaran argued: “Iran will not pull back. It will continue defending its alliances. Israel hasn’t been able to impose a new order.” He pointed to Hamas and Hezbollah’s survival, despite heavy blows, as proof that Israel had not achieved a decisive victory.
That defiance is echoed in propaganda. Iranian state media downplayed the scale of Israeli strikes, framing them instead as proof of failure: Israel, they claimed, had not dismantled the nuclear program. Instead, the coverage glorified drones and missiles that pierced Israel’s defenses and celebrated the Revolutionary Guard’s ability to strike inside Israeli cities, boasting of “shattering the myth of the Iron Dome.”
But capability is another matter. “Iran’s ambitions haven’t changed,” said Tom Warrick of the Atlantic Council. “But its capacity is currently limited because of the military setbacks against Israel. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are trying to rebuild – and Iran will do whatever it can to keep its militias strong, influential, and loyal to Tehran above the states they operate in.”
And the nuclear question looms. Before the war, Iran’s enrichment levels had reached 60% – dangerously close to weapons grade. Israeli and U.S. strikes dealt serious damage to its facilities but did not destroy them entirely. Kuperwasser argued that this moment could force shifts inside the regime: “Moderates may have a stronger voice now, and the Supreme Leader may recognize the need for some change. The real test will be whether Iran insists on retaining the right to enrich uranium in future agreements with the United States or the IAEA, or whether it backs down. If they drop that demand, it would mean they’ve realized their strategy has to change. But until now, they haven’t.”
Ghassan Taqi
صحفي متخصص في الشؤون العراقية، يعمل في مؤسسة الشرق الأوسط للإرسال MBN منذ عام 2015. عمل سنوات مع إذاعة "أوروبا الحرة" ومؤسسات إعلامية عراقية وعربية.
