Iran's proxy militias may be unable to help if Tehran opts to hit back at US

Iran's proxy militias across the Middle East have yet to retaliate for the overnight strikes against the Islamic Republic and are sending mixed signals about their willingness to strike US targets – or even Israel – in coming days.
The apparent reluctance or inability of such groups to come to Iran's aid will limit Tehran's options if decision-makers there opt to escalate the conflict with the US.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned the US on Sunday in a statement carried by state TV to 'expect regrettable responses' to its strikes on the country's nuclear sites.
Iran, it said, would 'use options beyond the understanding … of the aggressor front' and would continue to target Israel, which has been hit by multiple waves of missile and drone attacks since it struck Iran on 13 June.
On Friday, a new wave of Iranian missiles launched in a first response to the US strikes hit sites in central Israel, injuring at least 10 people, according to Israeli rescue services.
The strongest statement in support of Tehran from the militant groups that make up its coalition of proxies across the Middle East – the so-called 'axis of resistance' – has come from the political bureau of the Houthi movement in Yemen.
The Iran-backed group called on Muslim nations to join 'the jihad and resistance option as one front against the Zionist-American arrogance', saying it was ready to target US ships and warships in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have already fought American forces in recent months, after the US president, Donald Trump, launched an air offensive against the group following months of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and against Israel. A ceasefire was agreed in May.
'The Houthis still retain enough capability to do what they like doing. If they want to hit US vessels in the Red Sea, they still have that capability. They are a wild card and the Iranians don't spend a lot of time trying to restrain them,' said Michael Knights, an expert in Iranian proxies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
There is, however, little evidence that Iran-aligned and supported groups in Iraq, which have struck US targets in the past, were planning imminent action.
Such groups could do considerable damage to US bases in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait and Jordan if mobilised, and have been attacked by the US in the past but are likely to be deterred by the potential high cost of launching new strikes against US.
'They could do some damage but the US understand these targets and would find them pretty fast,' said Knights.
One Tehran-backed Shia militia in Iraq, Kata'ib Hezbollah, has threatened to attack 'US interests' in the Middle East in response to Washington's participation in Israel's support. One of its commanders, Abu Ali al-Askari, was quoted on CNN as saying that US bases in the region 'will become akin to duck-hunting grounds'.
However, the group suffered heavy losses in US airstrikes after killing three US soldiers at a base in Jordan last year and may not follow through on its rhetoric.
Hezbollah, the powerful Islamist militant militia based in Lebanon that has long been supported by Tehran, has made no official statement, with its officials briefing journalists in the region that it would stay out of any new clash between Iran and the US.
Hezbollah, the keystone of Iran's axis of resistance, was very significantly weakened by Israel's air offensive and ground invasion of Lebanon last year. Its entire leadership was killed and stocks of missiles, intended to deter Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear programme, destroyed.
Hamas, another member of the coalition of militant groups built up by Tehran over recent decades, is in no position to threaten the US or Israel currently, analysts said.
Links between the proxies and Tehran have been further weakened in the last week after assassinations conducted by Israel.
Several senior officials in the Revolutionary Guards killed in airstrikes were involved in running the coalition of militant groups, including Behnam Shahriyari, who Israeli military officials said was in charge of equipping proxy forces with weapons including ballistic missiles.
Shahriyari was killed while driving in western Iran on Friday, Israel's military said.
The US has about 20 bases in the Middle East and tens of thousands of troops. It also has an extensive diplomatic presence, that could potentially be targeted.
The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said military generals have elevated protection measures across the region, especially in Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf.
'Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks, which would be an incredibly poor choice,' Hegseth told reporters at a press conference on Sunday.
Underlining the threat, a Middle East-based maritime centre overseen by the US. military warned on Sunday that there was a 'high' risk to US-associated ships after the American strikes.
'The threat to US-associated commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is currently assessed as HIGH,' the Joint Maritime Information Center wrote in an advisory to shippers.
Other means of retaliation available to Tehran may take longer to mobilise. In previous decades, Iran has used massive bomb attacks against US troops in Lebanon or Jewish and Israeli targets as far away as Argentina.
Last week, the FBI intensified investigation and monitoring of 'sleeper cells' linked to Hezbollah in the US.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Guardian

39 minutes ago

• The Guardian

Why Trump bombed Iran

The US has joined Israel in its attacks on Iranian nuclear sites. Michael Safi hears from reporter Hugo Lowell and world affairs correspondent Andrew Roth on what happens now

Telegraph

an hour ago

• Telegraph

Did Trump's strike pay off? New images show Iran's nuclear ambitions in ruins

US strikes on Iran may have set the country's nuclear programme back by several years, according to preliminary expert analysis. Donald Trump's claims that Iran's nuclear sites had been 'completely and totally obliterated' were likely to be an overstatement, serving and former US military officials said – but it is probable that all three facilities targeted suffered extensive damage. Under best-case assessments, Iran's capacity to enrich uranium has been severely degraded, if not destroyed. However, the country's existing stockpiles of uranium enriched to near weapons grade – enough to fuel 10 nuclear bombs – is thought to have survived. Understanding the extent to which the US has damaged Iran's nuclear programme is a vital in determining whether the strikes were a one-off or merely the opening salvo of a wider conflict US B-2 stealth bombers and cruise missiles struck Iran's three most important nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. If the strikes succeeded in destroying centrifuge halls at the facilities, they would prevent Iran from further enriching its uranium stockpiles to a purity of 90 per cent – something it has not done so far, according to UN inspectors. Satellite images of convoys leaving all three sites in recent days support Iran's claims that it moved its 400-kg stockpile – much of it previously held at Isfahan – to a secret underground location shortly before the strikes. Even if that were the case, however, the damage inflicted elsewhere would still make it difficult to turn the uranium into a bomb. Even if Iran had retained its fissile material, it would be 'like having fuel without a car,' said Ronen Solomon, an Israeli intelligence analyst. 'They have the uranium – but they can't do a lot with it, unless they have built something we don't know about on a small scale.' That is not beyond the realm of possibility. Iran succeeded in keeping its Fordow facility a secret for seven years before it was dramatically exposed, by Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy – then the leaders of the US, UK and France – at a joint press conference in 2009, following a joint intelligence operation. Fordow Of the three sites attacked, Fordow was by far the most important. The last-known site developed by the Iranians was deliberately designed to withstand aerial attack. An 'engineering marvel', in the words of one Western official, its main centrifuge halls lie buried up to half a mile inside a mountain. Not only does a layer of solid rock act as a natural shield impervious to most bombs, but additional artificial layers of reinforcement are also believed to have been added. The GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bomb – 12 of which the US dropped on Fordow – is capable of penetrating 60 metres of standard concrete before exploding. But Iran is believed to have reinforced the centrifuge halls at Fordow with ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC), which can withstand six times the amount of pressure of normal concrete – up to 30,000-lb per square inch. If Iran used the best quality UHPC, Fordow would have been significantly harder to destroy. Given that the site is underground, it remains difficult to assess the scale of the damage yet, with both Iranian and US officials saying they are still conducting evaluations. Natanz Above-ground facilities at Natanz, Iran's largest enrichment site, had already been damaged by extensive Israeli strikes, as shown by satellite imagery. The destruction of the site's electric substation may have knocked out power, potentially damaging centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog. Natanz also housed an underground centrifuge hall thought to have been the target of two US bunker-busters. The site was additionally struck by cruise missiles fired by a US submarine in the Arabian Sea. Isfahan Much of Iran's mostly highly enriched uranium is thought to have been stored at the nuclear research and production centre near the city of Isfahan, the ancient capital of Safavid Persia. International inspectors verified the fuel was there a fortnight ago, but satellite imagery suggests Iran may have moved it in recent days. Israel had previously struck laboratories and three other buildings at the facility. The US did not use bunker-busters on Isfahan – which is thought to be mostly above ground – and instead attacked with cruise missiles. The strikes are thought to have damaged six additional buildings, including a fuel rod production facility. Overall assessment A fuller picture of overall damage may emerge in the coming days, with experts urging caution about attaching too much credibility to the US president's more optimistic pronouncements or to Iran's defiant claims that its nuclear capacity remains largely intact. Clionadh Raleigh, head of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a conflict-monitoring group, warned that although the strikes might alter the timeline of Iran's nuclear programme, they would do little to alter its ultimate trajectory. 'The regime's broader power and intentions are likely to remain intact,' said Ms Raleigh. 'Iran's military and intelligence systems are designed and built to survive. The structure is deeply layered and resistant to collapse. Even if key infrastructure is destroyed, the system adapts – and in some cases, becomes more dangerous in the process. 'There's no evidence that the strikes will permanently end Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities. What they may do is shift the timeline.' Others were less cautious. Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official who served in the first Trump administration, told the New York Times that the US strikes will 'likely set back the Iranian nuclear programme two to five years' – an assessment shared by Jason Brodsky of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a US-based pressure group. The setback stems not only from the strikes themselves. Repairing the damage will be far harder following the assassination of more than a dozen nuclear scientists in the past 10 days, Israeli officials said. 'Several of the eliminated scientists had spent decades advancing nuclear weapons, constituting a significant part of the Iranian regime's plans to annihilate the State of Israel,' one official said. 'These scientists had diverse professional expertise and extensive experience.'

Sky News

an hour ago

• Sky News

An Iranian attack on US military bases could draw the UK into the conflict

When I got to Chequers on Sunday morning the prime minister had clearly been up for most of the night and hitting the phones all morning with calls to fellow leaders in Europe and the Middle East as he and others scrambled to try to contain a very dangerous situation. His primary message on Sunday was to try to reassure the public that the UK government was working to stabilise the region as best it could and press for a return to diplomacy. But what struck me in our short interview was not what he did say but what he didn't - what he couldn't - say about the US strikes. It was clear from his swerve on the question of whether the UK supported the strikes that the prime minister neither wanted to endorse US strikes nor overtly criticise President Trump. Instead, his was a form of words - repeated later in a joint statement of the E3 (the UK, Germany and France) to acknowledge the US strikes and reiterate where they can agree: the need to prevent Iran having a nuclear weapon. He also didn't want to engage in the very obvious observation that President Trump simply isn't listening to Sir Keir Starmer or other allies, who had been very publicly pressing for de-escalation all week, from the G7 summit in Canada to this weekend as European countries convened talks in Geneva with Iran. 4:00 It was only five days ago that the prime minister told me he didn't think a US attack was imminent when I asked him what was going on following President Trump's abrupt decision to quit the G7 early and convene his security council at the White House. When I asked him if he felt foolish or frustrated that Trump had done that and didn't seem to be listening, he told me it was a "fast moving situation" with a "huge amount of discussions in the days since the G7" and said he was intensely pressing his consistent position of de-escalation. What else really could he say? He has calculated that criticising Trump goes against UK interests and has no other option but to press for a diplomatic solution and work with other leaders to achieve that aim. 1:15 Before these strikes, Tehran was clear it would not enter negotiations until Israel stopped firing missiles into Iran - something Israel is still saying on Sunday evening it is not prepared to do. The US has been briefing that one of the reasons it took action was because it did not think the Iranians were taking the talks convened by the Europeans in Geneva seriously enough. It is hard now to see how these strikes will not serve but to deepen the conflict in the Middle East and the mood in government is bleak. Iran will probably conclude that continuing to strike only Israel in light of the US attacks - the first airstrikes ever by the US on Iran - is a response that will make the regime seem weak. 2:38 But escalation could draw the UK into a wider conflict it does not want. If Iran struck US assets, it could trigger article five of NATO (an attack on one is an attack on all) and draw the UK into military action. If Iran chose to attack the US via proxies, then UK bases and assets could be under threat. The prime minister was at pains to stress on Sunday that the UK had not been involved in these strikes. Meanwhile, the UK-controlled airbase on Diego Garcia was not used to launch the US attacks, with B-2 bombers deployed from Guam instead. There was no request to use the Diego Garcia base, the president moving unilaterally, underlining his disinterest in what the UK has to say. The world is waiting nervously to see how Iran might respond, as the PM moves more military assets to the region while simultaneously hitting the phones.