Iran’s strategy of maintaining influence across the Middle East through a network of armed non-state actors was Khamenei’s most consequential foreign policy legacy — and also, in its recent near-collapse, his greatest strategic failure. With Khamenei gone, the future of that network is one of the most important open questions in regional security.
Hezbollah was the crown jewel of the network. Created with Iranian guidance and funding in the early 1980s, it grew into the most capable non-state military force in the world, holding political power in Lebanon and maintaining a military capacity that deterred Israeli military action for years. Israel’s sustained campaign against Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure has dramatically reduced that capability, though the organization has not been destroyed.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization that Iran supported financially and militarily, launched the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the subsequent conflict. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has devastated Hamas’s military capacity and killed much of its leadership. The organization survives in some form but is a shadow of what it was before October 7.
The Houthi movement in Yemen and various Iraq-based militias complete the network. These actors have continued to operate during the current conflict, launching attacks on regional targets and US military assets. Their operational independence from direct Iranian command and control has always been significant — they have their own political agendas and constituencies.
The death of Khamenei removes the central strategic authority that conceptualized and sustained this network. Whether his successor will invest the same resources and political capital in rebuilding it — at a time when the costs have been made devastatingly clear — is a crucial question. A decision to scale back proxy support could be transformative for regional dynamics.
