While the ceasefire was still in effect, Iran worked behind the scenes to develop a plan for escalating the conflict through its proxies across the Middle East, according to a report published Saturday in the New York Times. The goal was to raise the cost for the United States and President Donald Trump if attacks against Iran resumed.
1+According to the report, during the ceasefire senior commanders from the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards held a series of coordination calls with commanders from Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Shiite militias in Iraq, aiming to prepare a scenario for broader escalation if the U.S. intensified its military activity against Iran. At the same time, Quds Force operatives reportedly continued working alongside the militias on the ground and even helped Hezbollah fill ranks depleted during fighting with Israel.
Mehdi Mohammadi, a senior advisor to Iran’s negotiating team, addressed Tehran’s new strategy on social media, claiming that the Revolutionary Guards are creating new conditions and platforms for war in order to change the rules of engagement. “The fronts are multiplying from different directions in the region, they are coordinated but operate independently. A new axis of resistance is forming with new actors,” he said.
1+Iranian analyst Mehdi Rahmati described the strategy to the New York Times in chess terms. “We are playing a big game of chess,” he said. The commentator added that “the militias are Iran’s chess pieces, and they must be moved wisely, at the right time and place, to achieve maximum impact.”
At the same time, experts who spoke with the paper noted that while Iran coordinates its proxies’ activities, these are not organizations fully controlled by Tehran. According to them, each of the organizations—Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Shiite militias in Iraq—has its own interests and varying degrees of autonomy, but all share a common goal: applying pressure on the United States and Israel and expanding Iran’s leverage in the region.