May 23, 2025: Iran is largely a Farsi speaking country in a region where most people speak Arabic. This dates back thousands of years to the Persian Empire, which only in the last century evolved into Iran. Throughout history Iran has been a disruptive force in the Middle East. Iran became even more powerful with the discovery of oil. The Iranian monarchy prospered until misrule by the ruling Shah. This happened when neighboring Iraq foolishly attacked their neighbor during a period of chaos in Iran. Iraq believed that the Iranians would be so distracted that they would not notice Iran trying to seize the tiny, oil rich Iranian province of Arabistan. The Iranians did mind and declared war on Iraq. To make matters worse a civil war broke out in Iran as religious leaders, the Shia Ayatollahs rebelled against the Monarchy. The Ayatollahs won and by the end of the 1980s Iran had become a religious dictatorship. After that these fanatics created military and special operations forces like the IRGC and Quds force. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps protected the Ayatollahs and a subgroup of the IRGC, the Quds Force, carried out disruptive missions throughout the region. This included forming, financing, arming and deploying mayhem throughout the Middle East and worldwide. Individuals considered enemies of Iran were assassinated.

Iran created or supported terrorist groups like Hezbollah, a Shia militia and political movement in Lebanon, Hamas, a Sunni militia and political movement in the Palestinian territories, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also a Sunni militia in the Palestinian territories. Since the end of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, Iran has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with numerous rockets, missiles, and small arms. Meanwhile Iran backed Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq, where this group had been involved in a civil war. Ongoing terrorist activities and the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011. Among other damage, all this mayhem led to the collapse of the Syrian government in late 2024.

Iran set the region on fire and the fire is still burning. To make matters worse, Iran declared a war of annihilation against Israel and the United States. Taking in these two powerful groups backfired. By 2025 American economic sanctions and Israeli subversion efforts and airstrikes had devastated the Iranian economy and military capabilities.

All this is exacerbated by ethnic and religious disputes. Most of the Arabs are Sunni, which is true throughout the Moslem world. A minority of Moslems are Shia and that includes most Iranians. Iran has been ruled by an aggressive religious dictatorship since the 1980s. This has led to Iran becoming an outlaw state because its radical religious government insists that Iran must take control of nearby Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are the custodians of the most sacred religious sites in the Moslem world. The main site is Mecca, which every Moslem, Sunni, or Shia, is obliged to visit once in a lifetime and pray together with Moslems from all factions. Iranian ambitions have led to a perpetual state of war in which Iran battles most other Moslem majority countries.

What makes an aggressive Iran so dangerous is that it does not use Iranians to do its fighting. Instead, Iran has created or taken control of other militant Moslem movements to do Iran’s fighting instead. The enemy is mostly Israel, the United States and Western nations in general, but sometimes includes Sunni Arab governments, usually Saudi Arabia as the Saudis control Mecca which Iran covets. With the recent exception of Iran’s missile attack on Israel, Iran fights its enemies via proxies. These are groups that are armed and supported by Iran to fight Iran’s battles willingly and enthusiastically against Iran’s enemies.

Currently Iran has about two dozen of these proxies throughout the Middle East. Most of these groups have been designated as terrorist organizations by Western nations, especially the United States. Most of these groups were weak, disorganized, and not very dangerous before Iran came along and offered to turn these groups into deadly threats against enemies of Iran.

Among the more dangerous and well known proxies there are groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, and Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat al Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al Shuhada and Asa’ib Ahl al Haq in Iraq. Iran has proxies in Syria and backs the Afghan Fatemiyoun brigade and the Pakistani Zainebiyoun brigade.

Iran gains a measure of control over these groups by supplying them with weapons, cash, and expert advisers to show them how to be most effective in carrying out attacks against their enemies. Iran has a large number of irregular warfare experts organized into the Quds Force. The Iranians are well organized when it comes to supporting and motivating proxy groups. Quds is the organization that handles all this and supplies individual experts as well as technical assistance to proxy groups Iran deems worthy of such expensive and extensive support. Iran spends at least several hundred million dollars a year on this proxy support, and in the past has spent several billion dollars a year. The decline has been due to Western sanctions but, as the Americans waived those periodically to the tune of $30-40 billion since October 2023, or given Iran billions of dollars impounded by the American since 1980.

Iran will lavishly support proxy groups for years before unleashing them in spectacular attacks. A recent example of this was the Hamas offensive in Gaza towards Israel. This was a big success, and the Israelis are still trying to recover. At the same time Iran activated Hezbollah even though Hezbollah was nervous about pushing the Israelis too far and several other proxies to take advantage of Israeli forces compelled to fight in many areas at once. This offensive began in late 2023 and will extend to late 2024 and perhaps even into 2025. Hezbollah was right to worry about Israeli retaliation because Israel has all but destroyed Hezbollah through a combination of exploding pagers and portable radios to an invasion of southern Lebanon to hunt down and destroy the remaining Hezbollah leaders and their surviving followers. For the moment, Hezbollah is no more and it may take up to a decade for the group to restore is power and influence.

Iran gets involved wherever it sees opportunities. For example, Iran provided military aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Where Iran sees an opportunity, it acts and that makes Iran very dangerous throughout the Middle East as well as Europe, the United States and even South America. For the moment reprisals by enemies of Iran have reduced the capabilities of the Shia Superpower. But as Iran, and the Persians before them, they have always rebuilt and returned to work on their endless list of humiliations to avenge.