Lazar Berman
Times of Israel, Dec. 31, 2024
“At first blush, it would seem that Israel has no business searching for proxies in the region…But history indicates otherwise.”
Israeli leaders have been boasting effusively about the country’s success in degrading Iran’s proxies in recent months.
“We knocked down Hezbollah, which was supposed to protect Iran,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month. “And Iran didn’t protect Hezbollah either. And neither of them protected [Syria’s Bashar al-] Assad.”
“We just split that whole axis right down the middle,” he said. Iran “spent probably $30 billion in Syria, another $20 billion in Lebanon, God knows how much on Hamas. And it’s all gone down the tubes.”
Indeed, since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has invested heavily in developing a network of loyal armed groups across the region. In addition to those described by Netanyahu, Tehran has also created powerful Shiite militias in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Until October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war, Iran’s proxies were central to its ability to influence — often dominate — developments in the Middle East, and to threaten its adversaries.
But after years on the defensive, Israel is now on the march against those proxies. Its success in rolling them back has opened up new opportunities for Israel. To take advantage of the reality emerging in the Middle East, should Israel imitate its archenemy and develop its own network of minority allies across the region?
A unique partnership
Broadly, a patron-proxy partnership is a relationship between two entities — states or non-state actors — in which the more powerful “patron” uses the other to accomplish its foreign policy goals; the less powerful “proxy” is fighting in a local conflict that the patron wants to influence; the two share a common enemy; and they coordinate operations. …SOURCE