Nearly two years ago, in September of 2024, Israel carried out an attack in which exploding pagers and walkie-talkies killed more than 40 people and injured over a thousand. Later that month, Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated.
Hezbollah, the Iran-allied political party and paramilitary organization based in Lebanon, still exists, but has certainly been battered, especially after years of war with Israel.
And now, with Iran engaging in conflict across the Middle East, Hezbollah has been supplanted by other organizations as Iran’s most active proxies.
That’s according to a report published this week by Fortune, which cited material from the Associated Press.
The Houthis in Yemen, as well as militias in Iraq, have not only established themselves as important proxies for Iran, but have begun to coordinate with each other, with Houthi personnel operating in Iraq.
The story notes that Iran “spent decades building up armed groups on Israel’s frontiers,” led by Hezbollah. But since Hamas’ October 7, 2024, attack on Israel, Israel has “battered” Hezbollah, and as a result, Iran is “now using the Iraqi militias and the Houthis to threaten Saudi Arabia and other American allies in the Gulf in order to drive up the costs of the war launched by the U.S. and Israel in February.”
That coordination, the AP said, grew throughout the Gaza war.
“The Houthis’ growing prominence during the Gaza war opened up a new horizon in Iraq.
Many groups there became eager to support the Houthis, and in return, the Houthis started sharing their military expertise with Iraqi militias,” Ahmed Nagi, senior Yemen analyst at the Crisis Group, told the AP.
A New Alliance
Most recently, the Houthis launched a major attack earlier this week on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, which threatens to destabilize global oil supplies and escalate the conflicts in the Middle East.
Additionally, the AP reported that in July, the Houthis and Iraqi militias had worked together on earlier swarm attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure.
Two Saudi officials and one Iraqi security official confirmed to the AP that the Houthis were involved in that attack.
When the U.S. and Saudi Arabia retaliated, also in July, they killed “ at least 20 Iraqi fighters, six Iranian advisers and at least one Houthi official.” The AP report this week was the first confirmation that the Houthi official had been killed in the attack.
The U.S. is “ concerned about the Houthi presence there and their ability to launch attacks on other countries, including Saudi Arabia,” a U.S. military official told the AP.
Iraq’s Disarmament Push
Iraq’s ruling government, the AP reported, is in the midst of what has long been a “balancing act” amid the Iran War. An organization called the Popular Mobilization Forces is officially part of the Iraqi security services, but is “close to Iran.” Iraq’s government, the report said, “has given non-state armed groups until the end of September to disarm, but some of the most powerful — and the closest to Iran — have said they have no intention of doing so.”
That balancing act, the AP noted, could be complicated by the U.S. sanctions push that was announced last month, targeting other countries that continue to assist Iran.
The AP stated that two officials with the Popular Mobilization Forces “denied involvement in the attack on Saudi Arabia and denied that the Houthis were operating under its auspices.”
The Arab Weekly reported this week on the efforts by Iraq’s ruling Shia Coordination Framework to push disarmament.
The government is “discussing options for bringing powerful armed factions’ weapons under state control, including a proposal to transfer some of their arsenal to Iran for storage, as Baghdad approaches the September 30 deadline for the withdrawal of US-led international coalition forces.” Those forces were the coalition that successfully defeated ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The three main militia factions are the Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, which have “repeatedly resisted demands to disarm because they want guarantees that their members will not face prosecution or political exclusion.”
Iraq’s new Prime Minister Al-Zaidi met earlier this summer with President Donald Trump at the White House, where Trump appealed in person for demilitarization.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
