Iran's ‘Axis of Resistance' are abandoning the Islamic Republic in its fight against Israel: ‘Time to keep your head down'
While Tehran has spent decades building up militias in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, most of the groups have found themselves battered in recent years, making them unable and unwilling to take on the Jewish state and support Iran.
Instead, the once-devoted Iranian proxies — which include Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Shiite militias — are focused on their own survival.
Some have even lost their faith in Iran's ability to protect them.
'For all of these networks right now, it's about survival. They all understand the wrath of these types of military campaigns,' Renad Mansour, a senior fellow and Iraq Initiative project director at the Chatham House think tank told the Wall Street Journal.
6 Iran has found itself increasingly isolated and with little allies to turn to amid the escalating battle with Israel.
Getty Images
6 The Houthi-rebels in Yemen are one of the few groups publicly supporting Iran, but the terror group has accomplished little since the conflict began last week.
AP
'Many of them question if this is the time for resistance or whether it's the time to keep your head down and try to stay out of this conflict,' he added.
The ongoing war in Gaza has claimed about 20,000 Hamas fighters and destroyed the vast majority of its terror infrastructure, according to the Israeli military — with the group only launching a few missiles over the border following the start of the conflict with Iran.
Hezbollah — which was once considered Iran's most powerful proxy — has been similarly crippled following last year's war campaign in Lebanon, which saw the Israel Defense Forces wipe out nearly all of the terror group's leaders, including founder Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel's surprise pager attack last September, which killed dozens of Hezbollah militants and wounded thousands more, also left a lasting chilling effect, with Arab diplomats telling the WSJ that the group is prioritizing its recovery rather than jumping into another conflict.
Some members of the paramilitary group also feel that Iran did little to protect them from the pager attack, with some Hezbollah figures going so far as to blame the intelligence failures in part on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the diplomats said.
6 Hamas is struggling to keep its hold on Gaza amid the renewed fighting and Israeli occupation.
AP
While Hezbollah had fired nearly daily missiles at Israel following the start of the war in Gaza, the group has yet to fire a single rocket after its patrons in Iran were attacked last week.
Lebanese officials, who are maintaining the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, have also warned the group to stay out of the conflict after Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam publicly stated on Monday that their nation will not be dragged into another war.
Tehran also lost another of its major supporters late last year when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was ousted from office in a lightning revolution.
6 Hezbollah is still reeling from its own fight with Israel, with Lebanese officials warning the Iran-backed group from getting involved in another war.
AP
Assad's toppling marked a huge blow to Iran's influence in the Middle East, which was only further emphasized after reports emerged that Iran did not order its allied militias to help Assad, a long-time ally, and instead called on the groups to evacuate.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, Iranian-backed Shiite militias have yet to target US military bases like they've done so in the past.
The groups are allegedly wary of entering war now that several members of their leadership have entered the government and are enjoying a lucrative period under the country's oil-based economy, according to Arab diplomats with knowledge of the internal discussions.
6 Houthi supporters in Yemen's capital burn an Israeli and American flag.
AP
'They've been sort of benefiting from Iraq's stability, in a way, and the high oil prices to develop economic empires,' said Mansour of the dozens of Iran-backed groups.
Only a single group in Iraq, Kataeb Hezbollah, has issued a statement on the conflict, warning that it would only get involved if the US were to directly join the fray.
The Yemen-based Houthi rebels have expressed support for Iran publicly, stating that they will target Israeli and US ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over the missile attacks on Tehran.
6 Smoke clouds billow at Tehran's Shahran oil depot following an Israeli strike.
via REUTERS
The terror group has also fired missiles at Israel in response to the new conflict, with the rebels touting that future attacks will be held in direct coordination with Iran.
Analysts, however, believe the show of force is only to maintain appearances.
'It's a Houthi-first policy,' Elisabeth Kendall, a Middle East expert and the head of the University of Cambridge's Girton College, told the WSJ.
'They're not going to put their own necks on the line for the supreme leader. They're going to figure out what's actually best for them,' she added.
The Houthis' terror infrastructure has been decimated over the past year by repeated American and British airstrikes.
The US attacks in March and April, which were the subject of the SignalGate controversy, left the Houthis missile and drone launch sites significantly degraded, according to US officials.
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The Hill
8 minutes ago
- The Hill
Ukrainian defenses face a challenge as Russian troops make gains ahead of the Putin-Trump summit
DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — Days before the leaders of Russia and the U.S. hold a summit meeting in Alaska, Moscow's forces breached Ukrainian lines in a series of infiltrations in the country's industrial heartland of Donetsk. This week's advances amount to only a limited success for Russia, analysts say, since it still needs to consolidate its gains before achieving a true breakthrough. Still, it's a potentially dangerous moment for Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely try to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to pressure Ukraine by arguing the 3 1/2-year-old war is going badly for Kyiv, said Mykola Bieleskov, a senior analyst at CBA Initiatives Center. 'The key risk for Ukraine is that the Kremlin will try to turn certain local gains on the battlefield into strategic victories at the negotiating table,' he said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30% of the Donetsk region that Kyiv still controls as part of a ceasefire deal, a proposal the Ukrainian leader categorically rejected. After years of fighting, Russia still does not fully control all of the Donetsk region, which it illegally annexed in 2022, along with the Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Infiltration by small groups of Russian forces Attention has been focused on Pokrovsk — a key highway and rail junction that once was home to about 60,000 and now is partially encircled — but Russian forces have been probing for weaknesses north of the city, according to battlefield analysis site DeepState. The forces found a gap east of the coal-mining town of Dobropillia, and advanced about 10 kilometers (6 miles). Zelenskyy noted its clear significance to the summit: 'To create a certain information backdrop ahead of Putin's meeting with Trump, especially in the American information space, suggesting that Russia is moving forward and Ukraine is losing ground.' Small groups of Russian troops are slipping past the first defensive line, hiding and trying to build up their forces, said Dmytro Trehubov, spokesman for Ukraine's 'Dnipro' operational-strategic group. Ukraine's military has been repelling these attempts, he said, although DeepState said the situation has not been stabilized. Analysts described the breach near Dobropillia as a localized crisis that could escalate if the Russians are not neutralized and their main forces can widen the gap. Exploiting an absence of Ukrainian infantry The breach of the defensive line has seemed inevitable for months, according to a drone pilot in the area, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly. Moscow's forces have been exploiting the lack of Ukrainian infantry, a problem tied not only to the country's stalled mobilization but also to poor management, the pilot said. 'We pay with territory and lives to fix mistakes — and we can keep fixing mistakes only as long as we have even a scrap of land left,' the pilot said. Ukrainian forces have tried to plug the gaps by extensive use of first-person-view drones — remotely piloted devices loaded with explosives that allow operators to see targets before striking. These FPVs have turned areas up to 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) from the front into deadly zones on both sides of the line. But because the Russians attack with small groups, it's hard to counter with drones alone. 'We can't launch 100 FPVs at once,' the pilot said, noting the drone operators would interfere with each other. With tactics and technology roughly equal on both sides, the Russians' superior manpower works to their advantage, said Bielieskov, the Kyiv-based analyst. 'They have no regard for human life. Very often, most of those they send are on a one-way mission,' he said. Stopping the infiltrations and assaults by armored vehicles requires different defenses and leadership structures — changes that have yet to appear on Ukraine's side, he said. Ukraine's military said Thursday additional troops have been moved to affected areas, with battle-hardened forces like the Azov brigade being deployed to the sector. However, the Deepstate map doesn't show any changes in favor of the Ukrainian army. Russia's focus on cutting supply routes Michael Kofman, a military analyst for the Carnegie Endowment, said in a post on X that it was too early to assess if the front line was collapsing, Russia is focused on expanding the breach of the front line into a corridor to support its ground forces, Bieleskov said. The strategy avoids direct assaults on heavily fortified urban centers, instead pushing through open terrain where Ukraine's troop shortages and large settlements make defense harder. If successful, such a move could bypass Russia's need to storm Kostiantynivka — once a city of over 67,000 people and now significantly ruined and on the verge of falling. That would complicate defending the region's last big cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka, posing a serious challenge for Ukraine's military. Cmdr. Serhii Filimonov of the 'Da Vinci Wolves' battalion of the 59th brigade, warned that Kostiantynivka could fall without a fight if Russia severs supply routes. With few major roads, maintaining logistics for the large number of Ukrainian forces in the area would become 'extremely difficult,' Filimonov said. Turning to the summit, Filimonov decried what he described as ongoing Russian killings and atrocities. 'And then the civilized world comes to them and says, 'Fine, let's make a deal.' That's not how it should be done,' he said.
San Francisco Chronicle
38 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump's 'safe and beautiful' move against DC homeless camps looks like ugliness to those targeted
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ms. Jay didn't wait for the authorities to come before packing her tent and carrying what belongings she could across Pennsylvania Avenue on her way to whatever comes next. She'd been living her 'Girl Scout life,' she said, saving money and looking for work while homeless. When she got word that the law was on its way, she found herself living the scouting motto: Be prepared. 'Last night was so scary,' she said, recalling when federal law officers, in concert with local police, began fanning out across Washington to uproot homeless encampments. 'I don't want to be the one to wait until the last moment and then have to rush out.' President Donald Trump's housecleaning started with official Washington and the denizens of its marbled buildings, back in the bureaucracy-scouring days of the Department of Government Efficiency. Now he is taking on the other side of Washington, having sent some 800 National Guard troops to help local police go after crime, grime and makeshift homeless encampments. First came the spring cleaning Back in early spring, Trump's efforts upended the U.S. Institute of Peace, among other institutions and departments. On Thursday, authorities brought in an earth mover to clear out an encampment within sight of that hollowed-out institute's handsome Constitution Avenue headquarters. The mission to clean the capital of criminal elements and ragged edges comes under Trump's Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force. Some in D.C. believe a different kind of ugliness is playing out. 'From the White House, the president sees a lawless wasteland,' said leaders of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. 'We see fellow human beings — neighbors, workers, friends and family — each made in the image of God.' For Andrew S., 61, the ugliness came Wednesday when agents he identified as being with the federal government treated him like an eyesore. They asked him to move from his resting place along the route where Trump would be driven to the Kennedy Center. 'You have to move because you're in eyesight of the president,' Andrew, originally from Baltimore, said he was told. He added, 'I didn't really take it serious until today, but the president really doesn't want us here.' He, Ms. Jay and some others interviewed and photographed by The Associated Press declined to give their full names in the midst of the heavy law enforcement presence in Washington. Saying goodbye to his belongings At the encampment near the peace institute, a man named George, 67, walked away Thursday carrying an umbrella in one hand and a garbage bag with some of his belongings in the other. City workers put his mattress and other possessions in a garbage truck idling nearby. He waved goodbye to it. It was that kind of day for others at the same site, too. 'I have known homelessness for so long that it is part of normal life at this point,' Jesse Wall, 43, said as he cleared his belongings Thursday from the site near the peace institute. 'What are you trying to prove here?' Wall asked, as if speaking with the law. 'That you're a bully?' David Beatty, 67, had been living at that encampment for several months. On Thursday, he watched as parts of it were roped off. Beatty and others were allowed to pack up what they could before the heavy machinery cleared remaining items from the area and dumped them into trucks and receptacles. What about the Golden Rule? He quoted a variation of the Bible's Golden Rule — 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' — and said, 'The idea that he's targeting us and persecuting us feels wrong to me.' Much of the clearing out Thursday was at the hands of local police. D.C. officials knew federal authorities would be dismantling all homeless encampments if local police didn't. Wayne Turnage, a deputy mayor, said the district has a process to do it 'the way it should be done.' The expectation was clear, if not overtly stated: Local police would go about the work in a more humane way than the feds. Jesse Rabinowitz from the National Homelessness Law Center said that, according to the briefing he received on the operation, people would be given the choice to leave or be detained at eight federal and 54 local sites. The intent, Rabinowitz said he believed, was to trash tents in the daylight (because authorities want the public to see that) and do the bulk of arrests in darkness (because they don't want that widely seen). Once penniless, he's now an advocate Born and raised in Washington, Wesley Thomas spent nearly three decades on the streets, struggling with drug addiction, until other homeless people and charitable organizations helped him get clean through therapy and back on his feet. Now he has had a place to live for eight years and works as an advocate for a nonprofit group that supported him, Miriam's Kitchen, where he's helped dozens find housing. 'The first day I was out there I was penniless, homeless, frightened, only the clothing on my back, didn't know where I was gonna sleep nor eat,' he said. 'Fortunately, there were some homeless people in the area, gave me blankets, showed me a safe place, St. John's Church, to rest my head for the night.' St. John's is across from Lafayette Park, which is across from the White House. It is known as the Church of the Presidents, because its sanctuary has seen all presidents since James Madison in the early 1800s. Thomas wanted the public to know that most of the people being moved off are not 'uneducated, dumb or stupid,' even if they are down on their luck. 'You got doctors, lawyers, businessmen, Navy SEALs, veterans, mailmen,' he said. 'Poor people come in all races, ethnicities and colors.'
an hour ago
20 years after its landmark withdrawal from Gaza, Israel is mired there
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Twenty years ago, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, dismantling 21 Jewish settlements and pulling out its forces. The Friday anniversary of the start of the landmark disengagement comes as Israel is mired in a nearly 2-year war with Hamas that has devastated the Palestinian territory and means it is likely to keep troops there long into the future. Israel's disengagement, which also included removing four settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's controversial attempt to jump-start negotiations with the Palestinians. But it bitterly divided Israeli society and led to the empowerment of Hamas, with implications that continue to reverberate today. The emotional images of Jews being ripped from their homes by Israeli soldiers galvanized Israel's far-right and settler movements. The anger helped them organize and increase their political influence, accounting in part for the rise of hard-line politicians like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. On Thursday, Smotrich boasted of a settlement expansion plan east of Jerusalem that will 'bury' the idea of a future Palestinian state. For Palestinians, even if they welcomed the disengagement, it didn't end Israel's control over their lives. Soon after, Hamas won elections in 2006, then drove out the Palestinian Authority in a violent takeover. Israel and Egypt imposed a closure on the territory, controlling entry and exit of goods and people. Though its intensity varied over the years, the closure helped impoverish the population and entrenched a painful separation from Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future independent state. Israel couldn't justify the military or economic cost of maintaining the heavily fortified settlements in Gaza, explained Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Misgav Institute and the Institute for National Security Studies think tanks. There were around 8,000 Israeli settlers and 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza in 2005. 'There was no chance for these settlements to exist or flourish or become meaningful enough to be a strategic anchor,' he said. By contrast, there are more than 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, most living in developed settlement blocs that have generally received more support from Israeli society, Michael said. Most of the world considers the settlements illegal under international law. Because Israel withdrew unilaterally, without any coordination with the Palestinian Authority, it enhanced Hamas' stature among Palestinians in Gaza. 'This contributed to Hamas' win in the elections in 2006, because they leveraged it and introduced it as a very significant achievement,' Michael said. 'They saw it as an achievement of the resistance and a justification for the continuation of the armed resistance.' Footage of the violence between Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers also created an 'open wound' in Israeli society, Michael said. 'I don't think any government will be able to do something like that in the future,' he said. That limits any flexibility over settlements in the West Bank if negotiations over a two-state solution with the Palestinians ever resume. 'Disengagement will never happen again, this is a price we're paying as a society, and a price we're paying politically,' he said. Anita Tucker, now 79, was part of the first nine Jewish families that moved to the Gaza Strip in 1976. She and her husband and their three kids lived in an Israeli army outpost near what is today Deir al-Balah, while the settlement of Netzer Hazoni was constructed. Originally from Brooklyn, she started a farm growing vegetables in the harsh, tall sand dunes. At first relations were good with their Palestinian neighbors, she said, and they worked hard to build their home and a 'beautiful community.' She had two more children, and three chose to stay and raise their families in Netzer Hazoni. She can still recall the moment, 20 years ago, when 1,000 Israeli soldiers arrived at the gate to the settlement to remove the approximately 400 residents. Some of her neighbors lit their houses on fire in protest. 'Obviously it was a mistake to leave. The lives of the Arabs became much worse, and the lives of the Jews became much, much worse, with rockets and Oct. 7,' she said, referring to the decades of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel and the date in 2023 of the Hamas attack that launched the ongoing war. Despite the passage of time, her family still is 'yearning and longing for their home,' she said. Several of her 10 grandchildren, including some who spent their early childhood in the Gaza settlements, have served in the current war and were near her old house. 'It's hard to believe, because of all the terrible things that happened that we predicted, but we're willing to build there again,' said Tucker. After Israel's withdrawal 20 years ago, many Palestinians described Gaza as an 'open-air prison.' They had control on the inside – under a Hamas government that some supported but some saw as heavy-handed and brutal. But ultimately, Israel had a grip around the territory. Many Palestinians believe Sharon carried out the withdrawal so Israel could focus on cementing its control in the West Bank through settlement building. Now some believe more direct Israeli occupation is returning to Gaza. After 22 months of war, Israeli troops control more than 75% of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of maintaining security control long term after the war. Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGO Network, said he doesn't believe Netanyahu will repeat Sharon's full withdrawal. Instead, he expects the military to continue controlling large swaths of Gaza through 'buffer zones.' The aim, he said, is to keep Gaza 'unlivable in order to change the demographics,' referring to Netanyahu's plans to encourage Palestinians to leave the territory. Israel is 'is reoccupying the Gaza Strip' to prevent a Palestinian state, said Mostafa Ibrahim, an author based in Gaza City whose home was destroyed in the current war. Israeli former Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, who was head of the country's Southern Command during the disengagement, remembers the toll of protecting a few thousand settlers. There were an average of 10 attacks per day against Israeli settlers and soldiers, including rockets, roadside bombs big enough to destroy a tank, tunnels to attack Israeli soldiers and military positions, and frequent gunfire. 'Bringing a school bus of kids from one place to another required a military escort,' said Harel. 'There wasn't a future. People paint it as how wonderful it was there, but it wasn't wonderful.' Harel says the decision to evacuate Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip was the right one, but that Israel missed crucial opportunities. Most egregious, he said, was a unilateral withdrawal without obtaining any concessions from the Palestinians in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority. He also sharply criticized Israel's policy of containment toward Hamas after disengagement. There were short but destructive conflicts over the years between the two sides, but otherwise the policy gave Hamas 'an opportunity to do whatever they wanted.' 'We had such a blind spot with Hamas, we didn't see them morph from a terror organization into an organized military, with battalions and commanders and infrastructure,' he said. The Oct. 7 attack, Israel's largest military intelligence failure to date, was not a result of the disengagement, said Harel. 'The main issue is what we did in the 18 years in between.'
