A drone attack sent smoke billowing from a giant Saudi oil facility, the largest such plant in the world. Two gas tankers burst into flames at an Egyptian port near the Suez Canal, a crucial choke point in global trade. Fireballs erupted over Jordan as missiles flew toward a base housing U.S. personnel.
War has enveloped a widening circle of targets across the Middle East in recent days, as Iran and its phalanx of proxy militias have sought to strike at U.S. allies, roil global markets and push the United States to halt its campaign against the Islamic Republic.
The attacks are part of what two senior Iranian officials depicted as a step-by-step plan, devised in secret during a fleeting cease-fire this spring, that would use Iran’s allies to escalate attacks if the United States intensified its assaults. The goal, the officials said, was to make the war as costly as possible for President Trump.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iran’s chief negotiator, even crowed on social media about the strategy with the proxy forces, which are known in the region as the “Axis of Resistance.”
“The rules of the conflict are changing and being rewritten, we are creating new conditions and platforms in the war,” Mr. Mohammadi said. “The fronts are multiplying from different directions in the region; they are of course coordinated but act independently. A new axis of resistance is emerging with new players.”
Iran and its allies have taken powerful blows since 2023, when the militant group Hamas attacked Israel. Recent events, however, have shown their capacity to regroup, stir chaos and gain Iran leverage.
Still, analysts do not consider the proxy forces — each with its own agenda — mere puppets of Tehran, though Iran’s level of coordination and control varies among them.
The Houthis in Yemen, for instance, are seen as the most autonomous of the groups that make up the alliance. Hezbollah coordinates the most closely with Iran, while Shiite militias in Iraq are somewhere in the middle in the degree of their willingness to act as a direct arm of Iran.
But the groups still find common cause against the United States and Israel. During the short-lived cease-fire, Iranian generals covertly strategized with proxy militia commanders on how to expand the war and raise its cost for Washington, according to the two officials, both familiar with the planning as members of the Guards, and both speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
Senior commanders from the Quds Force, the external arm of the Guards that fosters proxy militias, held virtual conference calls with commanders from Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite armed groups in Iraq, the officials said.
Quds Force commanders and advisers have also been working closely with the militias on the ground, according to the two officials. The Guards have tried to fill the void in Hezbollah’s ranks, which have been decimated by war with Israel, while also serving in Iraq on bases operated by Shiite militias.
A wave of U.S.-Saudi airstrikes targeted militias in Iraq early Wednesday, and Iranian media published photographs of four men killed in the attacks, all wearing the distinctive olive uniforms of the Quds Force, their coffins draped with Iran’s flag.
“We are playing a grand game of chess; the militias are Iran’s chess pieces to be moved wisely at the right time and place, for maximum impact,” Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst in Iran and an expert on the regional militias, said in a phone interview.
Aside from lobbing missiles and drones at military bases housing U.S. troops, the attacks have been calibrated to avoid direct confrontations with American or Israeli forces, which could lead to harsh retaliation against Iran, analysts said. Igniting a fire at the Saudi oil facility drew the kingdom into the war, but the Saudi response targeted Iraqi militias accused of the attack rather than Iran.
Iran mobilized its proxy forces for a variety of reasons, analysts said. First and foremost, the strategy aims to limit oil exports from the region, driving up gas prices in the United States ahead of the U.S. midterm elections and reducing revenue for Washington’s Arab allies.
Tehran senses that severe economic damage might make its neighbors more amenable to Iran’s ambition to control all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, analysts said. About 20 percent of the world’s oil supply transited the strait before the war.
“Iran thinks that its neighbors are vulnerable,” said Afshon Ostovar, the author of a history of the Middle East in the 21st century. “They are basically just trying to twist the arm of the Saudis and gain some concessions.”
With its oil exports largely blocked in the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has been shipping much of its oil through a pipeline across the kingdom. It is then exported out of a Red Sea port and through the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow strait separating Yemen from Africa.
The Houthis, who had largely sat on the sidelines after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, announced a naval blockade against Saudi shipping on July 20 and began missile and drone attacks to enforce it.
Then another, far longer route to Asia, through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, came under threat on Wednesday as unidentified drones hit tankers in Egypt — opening a new front. Iran rejected accusations that it was responsible.
The Houthis have their own reasons for putting pressure on their neighbor, Saudi Arabia, especially finding an end to Yemen’s long-running civil war, in which the kingdom had played a devastating role.
“They are coordinating with Iran, but they are not necessarily acting on behalf of Iran,” said Firas Maksad, the managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. “It’s a calibrated escalation and it’s part of this negotiation by fire that is ongoing between the Houthis and the Saudis.”
Another reason that Iran’s allies are attacking is more ideological, analysts said. Iran developed its proxy network with two primary goals: to help drive the United States military out of the region and inflict harm on Israel, and to use the militias as a shield against attacks on Iran itself.
Neither strategy fully worked, especially after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the linchpin of the axis. Hamas, too, is a mere shadow of its former self.
“Iran’s proxies are participating in the war because they, alongside Iran, are desperately trying to hold onto their claimed status as revolutionary forces against the U.S. and Israel,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London research group. Absent their original intent, the militias have instead become “a force for disruption,” she said.
Hezbollah, once Iran’s powerful partner on Israel’s doorstep, feels newly threatened by an Israeli-Lebanese peace deal, brokered by Washington in June, that includes the unlikely goal of disarming the militia.
The group has been attempting to rebuild after war with Israel, which assassinated the militia’s longtime leader and killed dozens of top commanders and thousands of foot soldiers.
Iran has tried to buttress those efforts, deploying Revolutionary Guards commanders to serve directly on Hezbollah’s leadership council, according to both Lebanese government officials and analysts. Senior Lebanese officials have expressed surprise that Iranian commanders turned out to be longstanding residents of buildings that Israel attacked far from traditional Hezbollah strongholds.
“One of the unintended consequences of destroying or degrading Hezbollah’s leadership is that the I.R.G.C. is now even more effectively in control of Hezbollah and its actions,” Mr. Maksad said.
Similar conditions hold true for Iraq, where a dizzying patchwork of militias emerged after the American invasion in 2003. At the urging of Washington, Iraq has been incorporating militias into its armed forces, but some smaller groups are resisting.
Unleashing Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias is an effort by Iran to thwart such American efforts. “They see that their footprint is diminishing, and they want to reaffirm their presence in the region and their regional role,” said Randa Slim, the head of the Middle East program for the Stimson Center in Washington.
Although the various militias have their own reasons for attacking, there is a unity of purpose, analysts said — and a shared sense that Mr. Trump and his Arab allies are reluctant to pursue war, leaving Tehran and its proxies with an opportunity.
“They see a moment,” Mr. Ostovar said. “They smell blood in the water, and they are pushing their advantage.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
