Iran’s friends are about to make life much more difficult for Israel and the US

Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi armed groups and the Houthis in Yemen are helping the Islamic Republic widen the conflict and raise its costs

By Murad Sadygzade, President of the Middle East Studies Center, Visiting Lecturer, HSE University (Moscow). https://www.rt.com/op-ed/authors/murad-sadygzade/Telegram

©  Marwan Naamani/picture alliance via Getty Images

The war’s second ‘ring of fire’ is no longer forming around Iran. It is already there. What we are witnessing is not a limited clash between a state under pressure and its immediate enemies, but the gradual emergence of a wider regional confrontation in which Tehran’s allied forces are moving from symbolic solidarity to practical engagement.

In Lebanon, Iraq, and now once again in Yemen, groups aligned with Iran are opening new fronts and making any American or Israeli campaign far more difficult to execute. If Iran cannot stop pressure by matching superior military power plane for plane or missile for missile, it can still answer by stretching the battlefield across time and space.

That is the real significance of the current escalation. Wars are easiest to sell and easiest to sustain when they look concentrated, technically manageable, and politically clean. They become much harder to continue when every strike produces another zone of instability, when every advance prompts retaliation, and when every promise of decisive success runs into a new and costly complication.

Iran and the forces loyal to it understand this perfectly well. Their goal is not necessarily to win a spectacular conventional victory over Israel or the US. They are trying to deprive their adversaries of a quick result, to turn military superiority into strategic over-extension, and to make the price of escalation rise with every passing week.

Israel is getting mired in Lebanon

Lebanon has become the clearest example of this dynamic. Israel entered the confrontation with Hezbollah expecting that greater firepower, harsher pressure, and deeper incursions would eventually impose a new reality in the south of the country. But so far the campaign has not produced the kind of result Israeli leaders would need in order to claim genuine success. Israeli officials are still speaking openly about expanding operations and about the need for a broad security zone in southern Lebanon. That does not sound like a completed military mission. It sounds like a campaign still searching for a workable outcome.

Israel remains capable of inflicting enormous damage on Lebanon. It can devastate border villages and infrastructure, and force large numbers of people from their homes. But the ability to destroy is not the same as the ability to impose control. A military campaign can appear overwhelming on television and still fail to neutralize the armed force it was meant to break. Hezbollah remains capable of hitting Israeli territory, and that single fact tells us that the war in Lebanon has not been resolved in Israel’s favor.

Israel is also suffering losses, not only in military terms but in political and psychological terms. Reports of fallen soldiers and continuing battlefield casualties show that Hezbollah is still able to turn southern Lebanon into a dangerous combat zone for the Israeli army. This is important because Israel’s military doctrine relies heavily on speed, on offensive initiative, and on the demonstration of dominance. A campaign that drags on, consumes manpower, exposes soldiers to attrition, and leaves northern Israel under continuing threat is not simply unfinished. It becomes strategically corrosive. It undermines the image of effortless superiority on which deterrence partly depends.

There is also the issue of equipment and operational pressure. Public claims about destroyed Israeli vehicles are often difficult to verify independently, and any serious analysis should avoid repeating battlefield propaganda as fact. But even without dramatic and unverifiable numbers, the broader reality is evident.

Hezbollah continues to create an environment in which Israeli ground operations are costly, risky, and politically burdensome. Israel may seize or enter territory, but it still has not demonstrated that it can transform that presence into a stable and secure military arrangement. As long as Hezbollah keeps imposing losses on Israel, the campaign remains strategically incomplete.

Hezbollah is demonstrating to the entire pro-Iranian regional camp that Israel can be denied a clean military outcome. That message matters in Iraq, in Yemen, and in every arena where forces aligned with Tehran are watching closely. Every week in which Hezbollah continues to strike back weakens the notion that Israel and the US can simply pummel the region into submission through superior firepower. That perception encourages allied groups to escalate because it suggests that resistance is not futile and that prolonged confrontation can produce strategic leverage, even against a stronger opponent.

Iraqi fighters activate

Iraq is the second arena where this logic is becoming visible. For years, Washington tried to handle pro-Iranian armed groups in Iraq through a familiar formula of pressure, selective strikes, deterrent warnings, and political bargaining. That formula is now under severe strain. The Iraqi factions loyal to Iran are again attacking Western interests and American-linked facilities, and their posture is hardening as the regional crisis grows. Any American move toward direct ground involvement against Iran would not remain confined to Iranian territory. It would immediately activate the Iraqi theatre in a much more serious way.

That possibility is now being discussed with increasing seriousness because Iraqi armed groups are presenting themselves as a reserve force that could mobilize in Iran’s favor if the war enters a more dangerous phase. This is not yet a mass transnational deployment on a scale that would determine the outcome of a large war by itself. But that is not the most important issue. The key point is that the Iraqi arena is being prepared politically, organizationally, and psychologically as an extension of the Iranian front. If Washington were to attempt a ground operation against Iran, it would face not one battlefield but several at once.

Washington appears to have assumed that by concentrating military pressure on Iran, it could either isolate Tehran or intimidate its regional allies into caution. But the opposite dynamic is taking shape. Pressure on the center is activating the periphery. Iran’s allies do not need to defeat the US or Israel in direct set-piece battles – only to ensure that no front can be fully closed, no rear area can be treated as safe, and no military plan can be presented as limited and controllable. That alone is enough to alter the political mathematics of war.

The Iraqi dimension is especially dangerous because it sits at the intersection of military operations, internal state weakness, and competing sovereignties. Iraq is not a sealed theatre. It is a country in which militias, parties, foreign forces, and state institutions coexist uneasily. Any renewed cycle of attacks on Western targets can therefore produce consequences far beyond the immediate strike. It can reignite internal tensions, weaken already fragile governance, increase pressure on the Iraqi government, and deepen the long-running struggle over whether Iraq is a sovereign balancing state or a contested zone inside a larger regional conflict. Once that process begins to accelerate, it becomes very difficult to contain.

Yemeni Houthis can shock the global economy

Yet the most strategically explosive development may be the renewed role of Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen. For nearly a month, the movement was relatively restrained in this specific phase of escalation. That relative quiet led some observers to believe that Yemen might remain a secondary theatre while events centered on Iran, Lebanon, and the Gulf. But this reading now looks premature. Ansar Allah has signaled a return to direct action against Israel, and even more importantly, it has once again raised the specter of pressure on maritime traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

That threat cannot be dismissed as rhetorical theater. Bab el-Mandeb is one of the great chokepoints of the global economy. It connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, which means it is part of the shortest maritime route between Europe and Asia through the Suez Canal. If this corridor becomes unsafe on a sustained basis, the consequences extend far beyond the region. Shipping companies reroute. Insurance premiums surge. Delivery times lengthen. Fuel costs rise. Supply chains absorb new friction. The shock travels outward through freight markets, commodity prices, and industrial planning. In the modern world, a narrow stretch of water can become a multiplier of global instability.

This is why even the threat of closure is almost as bad as closure itself. Markets do not wait patiently for a waterway to be blocked in definite terms before reacting. They respond to risk. If Ansar Allah signals that ships tied to Israel or to its supporters may face attack, and if the movement demonstrates that this threat is credible, then the commercial effect begins long before a formal blockade exists. Some carriers will avoid the route. Others will demand sharply higher rates. Naval escorts may become more common. A military problem turns into a commercial one, and a commercial problem soon becomes a macroeconomic one.

A serious disruption in Bab el-Mandeb would also hit the Gulf states in complicated ways. On the surface, high oil prices often appear beneficial for energy exporters. But in wartime the picture is much less straightforward. Gulf monarchies depend not only on price levels but also on predictable flows, secure shipping, investor confidence, infrastructure safety, and the broader perception that the region remains a viable center for trade and finance. A war that pushes up energy prices while simultaneously making maritime transit less secure can produce gains on one side and losses on the other. It can raise revenue while also raising risk. It can improve the price per barrel while damaging the political and logistical environment needed to move that barrel efficiently.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in particular would face a difficult balancing act. Both states have tried to reduce their exposure to open-ended regional wars while preserving close security relationships with Washington. But a wider confrontation involving Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Israel would undermine that balancing strategy. Even if they avoid direct military participation, they remain physically embedded in the conflict zone. Their ports, export routes, desalination infrastructure, airports, and industrial facilities exist within missile and drone range of hostile actors. In other words, geography limits neutrality. The Gulf states can try to hedge politically, but they cannot fully hedge physically.

A regional war goes global

The effects on the global economy could be severe if this pattern continues. The most obvious risk is a combined shock to energy and logistics. If pressure on the Strait of Hormuz coincides with renewed disruption in Bab el-Mandeb, the world economy would face stress on two of its most sensitive arteries at once. Oil prices would rise not simply because of lost supply, but because of fear, insurance costs, and the scarcity premium that always appears when multiple chokepoints are threatened simultaneously. Gas markets would become more nervous. Shipping costs would climb. Import-dependent economies would feel the squeeze first, especially poorer countries already vulnerable to debt, inflation, and food insecurity.

This is how regional wars become global economic events. They do not need to shut every route completely or destroy every refinery to trigger wider consequences. They only need to make enough critical routes uncertain at the same time. Once uncertainty spreads across energy and transport, it feeds into everything else: Freight becomes more expensive, manufacturing inputs arrive later, food prices rise through transport and fertilizer costs, central banks face renewed inflation pressure and governments face budget strain. Political instability follows economic stress, especially in countries where societies are already exhausted by previous shocks.

Have the US and Israel miscalculated?

All of this points to a broader conclusion. The conflict is expanding because the forces aligned with Iran are deliberately making it expand. Their strategy is not based on rapid decision or spectacular breakthrough. It is based on the controlled multiplication of pressure points. Hezbollah keeps the northern Israeli front unstable. Iraqi factions raise the cost of any deeper American military involvement. Ansar Allah threatens one of the world’s most important maritime corridors. Iran itself remains the central actor, but it does not need to act alone in a linear and isolated fashion. Its allies provide strategic depth, geographical spread, and the ability to transform one war into several interconnected confrontations.

From this perspective, American planners appear to have miscalculated. They may have believed that forceful pressure would narrow Iran’s options and restore deterrence. Instead, it risks producing the opposite result. Rather than isolating Iran, escalation is drawing its allied forces more tightly into the conflict. Rather than shortening the crisis, it is lengthening it. Rather than concentrating the battlefield, it is fragmenting it across the region. That is a dangerous trajectory, because a dispersed war is often harder to win than a concentrated one. It taxes logistics, political patience, alliance cohesion, and public confidence all at once.

What happens next will depend on whether the US and Israel continue to believe that greater military pressure can still produce strategic clarity. That belief now looks increasingly questionable. The longer the war continues without a decisive and stable outcome in Lebanon, the more confidence Hezbollah and its allies will gain. The more American assets are threatened in Iraq, the more difficult it becomes to present deeper intervention as manageable. The more Ansar Allah raises the cost of shipping through Bab el-Mandeb, the more the conflict escapes the boundaries of local war and enters the realm of global economic disruption.

The likely consequence is not a clean victory for any side, but a long phase of attritional regional instability. Israel may continue to intensify its campaign in Lebanon because it has not yet achieved the result it wants. Iraqi militias may continue attacking Western targets while preparing politically for a wider war. Ansar Allah may increase the use of maritime pressure because it understands that chokepoints can generate strategic effect far beyond Yemen itself. Iran, for its part, will keep trying to turn every enemy move into a trigger for wider overextension. It does not need to win in one dramatic moment. It only needs to ensure that its adversaries cannot close the conflict on their terms.

That is the central lesson of the present moment. Military superiority does not automatically translate into political success, especially in a region where allied non-state actors can open multiple fronts with relative flexibility. The US and Israel retain enormous destructive capacity. But destruction is not the same thing as control, and control is not the same thing as victory.

In that sense, the strategic initiative is no longer defined only by who can strike harder. It is increasingly defined by who can force the other side to fight on too many maps at once. Iran and the forces loyal to it appear determined to do exactly that. They are trying to stretch the conflict in time, to stretch it across geography, and to erode the ability of their adversaries to maintain focus. For now, that strategy is working far better than many in the US and Israel.