Armed militant groups in the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” have welcomed Tehran’s launch of more than a hundred missiles against targets in Israel on Tuesday and called for further attacks.
The statements, from groups in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, underline the regional extent of the current crisis, though analysts says that many key members of the Iranian-backed coalition have been so weakened over the course of the last year that their ability to convert rhetorical threats to real danger to Israel is limited.
Tuesday’s attack on Israel followed a series of devastating Israeli strikes on Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Shia Islamist militia’s leader and a towering figure in Iran’s network of fighters across the region.
Hamas, the Iran-backed militant group in Gaza whose surprise attack into Israel last October triggered the crisis, praised the Iranian missile strikes, saying they avenged Israeli assassinations of a series of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian commanders over the recent months.
“We congratulate the heroic rocket launch carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, on large areas of our occupied territories, in response to the occupation’s continuing crimes against the peoples of the region, and in retaliation for the blood of our nation’s heroic martyrs,” the group said.
Yahya Saree, a spokesperson for the Houthis, an Iran-backed group which controls much of Yemen, “commended” Iran and threatened to “widen its operations against the Israeli enemy or those backing them” unless there was a ceasefire in Gaza. The group has been responsible for dozens of rockets aimed at Israel and strikes on international shipping in the Red Sea.
Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior adviser to the Counter-Extremism Project, a transatlantic thinktank and advocacy group, said it was predictable that the Houthis and other groups would make such threats.
“We shouldn’t read too much into the rhetoric … the Palestinian groups do not have the capability to escalate outside the [occupied] West Bank, while the Israelis have been so successful in last couple of weeks that I don’t think Lebanese Hezbollah can come to Iran’s defence.”
Hezbollah, the most powerful of Iran’s proxies and the keystone of the coalition, is reeling from the Israeli assassination campaign.
The group has lost nearly 500 fighters since it started firing into Israel in support of its ally, Hamas, last October and was then drawn into a prolonged war of attrition.
More than a thousand members were injured by exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, an attack presumed to be the work of the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, and hundreds more are thought to have died in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon over the past week. Casualties include much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Nasrallah, who is considered irreplaceable.
Iran had long hoped Hezbollah’s massive rocket armoury and tens of thousands of experienced fighters would deter Israel from a major strike against Iran, possibly targeting Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Alia Brahimi, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, said that Iran’s decades-long strategy of building a coalition of ideologically aligned proxies had been vindicated.
“Iran feels under attack now and these are expendable components of its arsenal. They have done what they were designed to do and have acted as a protective shield,” Brahimi said.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired toward the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and toward an airbase in a Tel Aviv suburb. The group has used surface-to-air missiles and shot down or chased off Israeli drones on several occasions – including in the past week.
On Saturday, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel’s main airport as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was arriving back from New York, where he had addressed the United Nations. The next day, Israel launched its biggest raid yet against the group, striking the port city of Hodeidah.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at the Crisis Group, said that before the war in Gaza, the Houthis were seen as a marginal faction in the axis.
That changed when the Houthis began hitting ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden making their way to the Suez Canal.
“Over the past year, the Houthis have taken centre stage,” Nagi said.
According to Faozi al-Goidi, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, the Houthis are not likely to be deterred anytime soon and could also target vessels further out in the Indian Ocean.
They may also seek to “partner with other militias to build an alliance that would threaten security in the region,” al-Goidi said.
After the suspected Israel operation targeting Hezbollah pagers, observers noted that pagers exploded in Syria and in Yemen, where 40 people were injured according to reports, underlining the regional networks built up by the group and Iran.
There are also powerful Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq, which remain largely unscathed, and in Syria, where they have suffered some losses.