Reviewing Iran's Proxies by Region: A Look Toward the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

• Author: Jahanbani, Nakissa

The January 2020 strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) commander Major General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi official Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of the Popular Mobilization Commission and Kata'ib Hezbollah commander, immediately raised questions about the implications for Iran's relationships with its proxies in the region and around the globe. With the subsequent escalation after the strike, it is important to get a better sense of groups that Iran could leverage to retaliate against the United States. Toward that end, having a better sense of past attack trends is useful as they can indicate groups' capabilities and resiliency and how Tehran may leverage them.

While there are dozens of rich case studies on Iran's relationships with prominent proxies or their involvement in notable countries, what broad trends are known about their relationships writ large, and how does that inform an understanding of possible paths forward? Particularly, given the new IRGC-QF commander Brigadier General Esmail Qaani's previous experience in Afghanistan, (a) a closer look at proxies in that country and other select South Asian countries (b) could highlight potential avenues for the IRGC's paths forward. Against that, this article asks: over the last decade, what were some trends in Iranian proxies' attacks across different regions, and, where possible to evaluate, how do those compare with the IRGC's? (c)

In an attempt to answer these questions, this article looks at recent historical trends in Iranian proxies' attacks (d) and fatalities across different regions from 2008 to 2019. (e) Each section has a short description of past Iranian involvement in that specific region coupled with a short discussion of overarching attack trends. A look at this relatively recent time period provides contextualization for proxies' activities and group capabilities and possible paths forward. For a more nuanced understanding of Iranian proxy trends, this study parses out Lebanese Hezbollah from other Iranian proxies (f) given LH's long-term partnership and considerable capabilities relative to other proxies. This article focuses on proxies in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa (g) for a couple of reasons. In Iraq and Syria, Iranian proxies were involved in the fight against the Islamic State for the last several years. With the arrival of Qaani and the drawdown of U.S. troops, there is speculation in the policy community that Iran will turn its gaze to Afghanistan and the broader South Asian region. (1) Additionally, policymakers identified Africa as a potential theater for Iran threat network retaliation after the Soleimani strike and scrutinized Iran's history of involvement on the African continent. (2)

Before proceeding further, it is pertinent to note this article's and the datasets' inclusion criteria and limitations for the attacks and fatalities (h) discussed here. First, data about groups' attacks was collected, coded, and analyzed from three databases: the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), and Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Centre's events database. (3i)

Due to strict inclusion criteria, (j) attacks coded in various datasets are underrepresented due to accessibility to certain areas for journalists during ongoing conflict and violence. (4) The author compiled data from multiple datasets in an effort to compensate for this underreporting. Despite this, the numbers presented in this article are likely underestimated, and yet they provide a baseline trend and initial analysis of underlying patterns in attacks. (k) Relatedly, a second caveat is that the data on the IRGC's attacks in Iraq and Syria is limited to observed battlefield operations. This does not accurately capture the various dimensions of the IRGC's involvement, which also operates in an advisory capacity for proxies and therefore may be indirectly involved in some attacks. To provide adequate context, there is discussion of indirect forms of IRGC activities in the background, including establishing, recruiting for, and advising proxies. Third, this study had to reckon with proxies that commit attacks in the context of a governmental security structure. For instance, some of the composite militias in the Hashd al-Shaabi, or the Popular Mobilization Forces that are part of the Iraqi government's security structure, are Iranian-backed. Attacks from these militias were included in this study if data sources explicitly described them as being perpetrated by the militia outside of its governmental role. Attacks were not included in this study when sources described them as being perpetrated by a "Hashd militia" or with some other reference to their governmental role. For example, the description of a July 10, 2017, attack in Janes dataset states, "In Imam Gharbi, Ninawa province, the 50th Brigade al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Kataib Babylon) killed two Islamic State militants in fighting." This attack was not included in this study as it was discussed in the context of the group's official role in the Hashd. It is reasonable to think that the group's activities in this instance were conducted as part of its role in the Iraqi government. While an artificial difference, this procedure provides consistency for data and hopefully protects from most conflation between group and governmental attacks.

This article proceeds as follows: in the first section, it looks at LH's, other proxies', and the IRGC's attack trends in the Middle East. Next, it extends a view to proxies' attack patterns in select countries in both South Asia, and the African continent, providing some context for Iran's relationships with proxies in those regions and potential paths forward.

Regional Analysis of Trends

Middle East: Lebanese Hezbollah, Other Proxies, and the IRGC (l)

Tehran's Middle East foreign policy touts long-standing proxy relationships and other activity in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and Syria, all which date back to the 1980s. (5)

Iran has a long history of supporting militant groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. In Lebanon, Iran established Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) in 1985 and cultivated it into a popular political party and militant organization over time with substantive domestic reach. Supporting LH has provided Tehran with two-fold benefits: (1) an avenue to expand Iran's regional reach and help build a land and air bridge from Tehran to the Mediterranean; (m) and (2) a buffer against Israel, a long-time target of its proxy and military strategy. Presently, LH has considerable political and social clout, including seats in the parliament, but the group is seemingly losing popularity. (6) As in Lebanon, in the Palestinian territories, Iran also has a history of supporting various militant organizations for the purposes of targeting Israel. These include but are not limited to groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. (7) While it could be argued that many of the Palestinian groups operate more as partners than proxies, they are included in this study of proxies due to the extent and long-term nature of support that Iran provided to the groups during the years of this study. For example, Iran was a primary source of weapons and funding for Hamas for most of the years in this study, as well as the main funder of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. (8) Similarly, Iran was the main source of funding and training for the PIJ. (9)

In Iraq, after the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iran's strategy focused on backing Iraqi politicians and militias as a buffer against a potentially hostile government in Baghdad, U.S. forces on its borders, and Saudi Arabia. (10) In addition to politicians, Iran supported Shi'a militias in Iraq, a policy dating back to the Iran-Iraq war, and, over time, added more groups to its roster. Presently, Iran supports some of the most influential militia groups in the Hashd al-Shaabi, or the Popular Mobilization Forces, which are part of the Iraqi government's security structure. (11) As Michael Knights has noted in this publication, Iran's proxies in Iraq reached "unprecedented size and influence" in late 2019. (12) Iranian dominance in Baghdad was contested domestically in October 2019, and the Iran-backed militias' repressive crackdown further eroded their support. (13)

Turning to Syria, Iran's proxy network extended into the country prior to the civil war. (14) Just before the conflict's outbreak, Tehran launched a multi-pronged foreign policy to assist the Assad regime, (15) such as sending in IRGC and Iranian army forces in an advisory capacity to train the Syrian military and transport supplies from Tehran. (16) Another pillar included raising new and bolstering existing militias and other non-state violent organizations in the country. Toward the latter, Ariane Tabatabai wrote in this publication that the Fatemiyoun Brigade, (n) for example, was established under the guidance of the IRGC-QF in 2012 and was intended to serve as an affordable means of Iranian support to the Assad regime: "fighters would be paid a few hundred dollars per month and promised residency rights to essentially serve as cannon fodder for Iran's efforts in Syria." (17)

In Syria, in addition to raising militias, Iran also directed LH's and proxies' fighters from Lebanon and Iraq, respectively. In 2012, both LH and Iraqi proxies began moving forces into Syria. (18) Those from Iraq included Iranian-backed militias within the Hashd al-Shaabi, such as Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (19) and Harakat al-Nujaba. (20) In addition to forming militias, Iran also worked with existing militias in Syria, such as Al-Ghaliboun, among several others. (21) LH was also pivotal in training pro-regime militias (22) and establishing several Iranian-supported militias in Syria, for example Quwat al-Ridha, (23) one of the groups that is now...