The Shadowy Backroom Dealer Steering Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’
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The U.S.’s killing of Soleimani was a specific attempt to dislocate the chain of command running from Tehran to its armed allies operating from Syria and Iraq to Yemen, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. But it didn’t degrade their ability to upend the region; it just made them more freewheeling, disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, attacking Israel and posing a growing threat to American forces.
“If the aim was to diminish Iran’s control of these groups, the United States achieved that. That’s where the problem comes from,” said Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow and expert on Iran’s regional policies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, or SWP.
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned last week that “we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 1973, and arguably even before that,” referring to the year of the Yom Kippur War.
“Soleimani was thought about as a once-in-a-lifetime figure, a generational player. They don’t come down the pike so often,” said Ray Takeyh, an expert on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard with the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think tank. “Qaani is a more understated figure.”
- A bureaucrat, he spent much of his career overseeing Iran’s interests in Afghanistan and spoke little to no Arabic.
- Unlike other senior figures in Tehran, he doesn’t appear to have played an active role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, joining the Revolutionary Guard, formed to defend the new rulers, a full year later, in 1980.
“We are all war kids,” he said in a 2015 interview, cited by Ali Alfoneh, an expert on the Revolutionary Guard. “Those who become friends at times of hardship have deeper and more lasting relations than those who become friends just because they are neighborhood friends.”
- When Soleimani mobilized tens of thousands of fighters to defend the Syrian government against Islamic State forces during the civil war there, Qaani helped recruit Afghan Shiites to join their ranks.
- In Iraq, the militias integrated deeper into the country’s political and security system, gaining power to influence national politics, while remaining outside state control.
- Receiving funding and arms from Iran, the groups all operated within an overall framework established by Tehran, but with the autonomy to pursue their own domestic agendas.
- The groups’ growing self-sufficiency relieved Tehran of some of the economic burden of financing them, but also lessened its ability to restrain them.
This is a problem for Iran.
“And that requires more of a backroom conversation than a cult of personality like Soleimani,” he said.
- “Soleimani had built a relationship with them over the years and was respected by them tremendously,” he said.
- “Qaani lacks the charisma and history of relationship with these Iraqi and other Arab groups…
- As a result, Qaani struggles much more in keeping the Iraqi groups in check and in line with the broader axis.
- Same problem exists in relation to Houthis who are more independent-minded.”
After the drone strike in Jordan, Iranian officials traveled to Iraq to tell its allies there that the attack had crossed a line by killing American troops, according to a senior adviser to the Iranian government who participated in the meetings.
- “The aim since October 7 has been to keep the other fronts busy to provide some breathing space for Hamas, but without inviting broader conflict or a U.S. attack,” he said.
- “It doesn’t fit into the Iranian pattern of escalation, and wouldn’t serve any of Iran’s strategic aims at the moment.”
Costas Paris contributed to this article.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
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Sune Engel Rasmussen is a correspondent who covers Afghanistan, Iran and North European affairs for The Wall Street Journal. His reporting often focuses on how people's lives and livelihoods are affected by violent conflict and economic inequality.
Currently based in London, Sune lived for nearly a decade in Afghanistan, Iran and Lebanon covering the Afghan war and the return of the Taliban, public upheaval in Iran, conflicts in Syria and Yemen and the economic collapse in Lebanon. His reporting on the fall of Kabul in 2021 was part of a package nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His 2019 book in Danish on the Afghan war was shortlisted for a Cavling Prize, the most prestigious award for journalism in Denmark.
Before joining the Journal in 2018, Sune was a correspondent for the Guardian in Afghanistan. Over the past decade, he also wrote for magazines such as the Economist, GQ, Harper's, National Geographic, Newsweek and TIME. He began his career as a music magazine reporter in his native Denmark.
He is currently working on a second book about the war in Afghanistan, due to be published by in early 2024.
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