(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



How Iran Shapes the Mideast: Power by Proxy [1]

['Alissa J. Rubin', 'Lazaro Gamio']

Date: 2024-04-06

Power by Proxy: How Iran Shapes the Mideast

TURKEY Militias in Syria and Iraq SYRIA LEBANON Iran Hezbollah ISRAEL IRAQ Hamas Egypt Saudi Arabia OMAN The Houthis Sudan YEMEN 500 miles TURKEY Militias in Syria and Iraq LEBANON SYRIA Iran Hezbollah IRAQ ISRAEL Hamas Egypt Saudi Arabia The Houthis Sudan YEMEN 500 miles The New York Times

For years, Iran has been the outsider.

Predominantly Persian-speaking in a region where most people speak Arabic, overwhelmingly Shiite where most are Sunni, it has been crippled by Western sanctions meant to make it a pariah.

Yet Iran has succeeded in projecting its military power across a large swath of the Middle East. Its reach equals — if not eclipses — that of traditional power centers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

And now, spurred by the war in the Gaza Strip, armed groups that Iran has fostered over the past 45 years have mobilized simultaneously toward similar goals: diminishing Israeli power and confronting Israel’s closest ally, the United States.

Iran has tried to capitalize on its outsider position by seeking out disempowered Shiite populations and offering to train and arm them, and by working with the sympathetic government of Syria.

The shadow war between Israel and Iran broke into the open this week, when Israel struck an Iranian Embassy compound in Syria and killed seven Iranian commanders, renewing fears of a broader conflict. Iran has promised to retaliate, but the calculus is tricky: The Iranians want to avoid igniting a full-fledged war that might drag in the United States and threaten the survival of Iran’s regime.

Altogether, Iran now supports more than 20 groups in the Middle East, directly or indirectly, with a combination of arms, training and financial aid. The United States has designated them as foreign terrorist organizations, and many of their leaders have been hit by sanctions, as has Tehran.

While they are often lumped together, and they do in fact share many of Iran’s goals, these groups also have some purely local interests. And, with a few exceptions, Iran does not completely control them.

Here is a look at the most prominent of the armed groups backed by Iran.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/06/world/middleeast/iran-hamas-hezbollah-houthis-iraq.html

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.