The attacks by pro-Iranian militias against the United States have struck a chord. Shortly after President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he had decided how to respond to the drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers at a military base in Jordan on Saturday, the group responsible, Kataeb Hezbollah, announced it was suspending all of its operations against the North Americans. troops. The pretext, to avoid getting the Iraqi government into trouble, barely concealed pressure from Iran.
The Islamic Republic immediately dissociated itself from the aggression of the Iraqi militias, one of dozens that groups allied with Iran have launched against American troops in Iraq and Syria since the war in Gaza began on October 7, but the first that has caused casualties. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Naser Kanaani said that the so-called “resistance groups” They do not follow the orders of the Islamic Republic. It’s a script that has been repeated for years. The Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian regime’s ideological army, has woven a network of allied armed groups across the region that serve to advance its interests and act as a guardrail in case it is held accountable for its actions.
The formula is not new, but Iran has managed to provide it with ideological cohesion around the rejection of Israel’s existence and the US military presence in its neighborhood. The ties of the Revolutionary Guard with the Lebanese Hezbollah, with the Palestinian Hamas, with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (of which Kataeb Hezbollah is part), with the pro-Assad militias of Syria and also, at various levels, have never been a secret. Houthi movement. However, since Israel declared war on Hamas over the October 7 attack, the pieces of the puzzle have begun to fit together.
Some analysts see a Tehran-directed operation in which these groups are nothing more than the tentacles of an octopus – to use former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s comparison – acting in concert. Even those who highlight the local, and often opportunistic, interests of each of the formations define the attitude of the Iranian leaders as cynical, declaring themselves unaware of their actions. Ultimately, all militias depend, to a greater or lesser extent, on the training and weapons, if not funding, of the Islamic Republic.
Until now, the stings of his resistance allies against American forces fit him like a glove. They have put the Biden administration faced with a poisonous choice: either to act exaggeratedly by directly attacking Iran and opening the thunder curtain – confirming Iranian accusations of interventionism – or to continue to calibrate the response while its attackers boast of command. But with the death of the three American soldiers, this tension seems to have reached its maximum limit. It is unclear whether Kataeb Hezbollah’s sudden turn is the result of 48 hours of intense behind-the-scenes pressure on Iran, or whether the militia’s decision – to shift to “passive defense” – is a tactic to frame its eventual reaction to Washington’s response as self-defense, i.e. a mere Iranian trick.
Despite the opacity that characterizes the Islamic regime, it seems clear that it is not interested in worsening the conflict to the point of involving its forces, because this would jeopardize its survival. For now, Kataeb Hezbollah’s step back has drawn harsh criticism on line among resistant groups.
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