The future of Iran’s relations with its regional allies

The antecedents of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional network of allies can be traced to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The revolution provided the ideological impetus for supporting groups opposed to Israel and Western influence in the region. The war encouraged Tehran to adopt a strategy aimed at preventing future conflicts from reaching Iranian territory by confronting adversaries beyond its borders through allied groups, a strategy referred to as ‘forward defence.’ In the subsequent years and decades, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq and Syria, all of which had originated under distinct national circumstances, emerged as Iran’s key regional partners. Each received varying degrees of Iranian support while preserving different levels […]