Despite Israel’s massive intelligence penetration and superior surveillance capabilities, Iran is trying to navigate co-ordination challenges with its regional proxies in order to synchronise attacks.
Since the US-Israel war struck Iran on February 28, the regime in Tehran has felt an existential threat. It retaliated with missiles and drones targeting Israel, US bases and Gulf states, but it has also moved to activate its network of regional allies.
The war, however, has exposed strains in Iran’s command structure after repeated intelligence failures led to the killing of top senior commanders, including the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Nonetheless, Tehran is still trying to adapt, according to three sources close to Iran.
“It is not always a coincidence when missiles are launched from Iran and Lebanon at the same time against Israel,” said a regional militant commander responsible for co-ordinating pro-Iran attacks across the region.
“The aim is to exhaust and disperse its air-defence layers,” he explained.
Hezbollah, Lebanon’s militant group and Tehran’s most powerful proxy, entered the war on March 2 by launching missiles at Israel, saying it was avenging the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel responded with a massive offensive against Hezbollah targets, but also struck civilian areas, killing more than 600 people and displacing more than a million. Hezbollah has been fighting daily since then, launching missiles and drones and attacking Israeli troops occupying parts of southern Lebanon. Its chief, Naim Qassem, made the message clear when he said the group would fight “until the very end”.
The militant source believes “Iran is fighting an existential battle and is acting accordingly”.
At least three of the attacks carried out by Hezbollah, including a massive barrage of rockets on Thursday evening, occurred at the same time as Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel.
Hezbollah, despite losing many of its commanders over the past two years of war with Israel, including its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, and facing a disarmament campaign in Lebanon, has continued to regroup, according to security sources.
A decisive battle
Military experts say the group may have been guided for months by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that one way to enhance co-ordination and avoid Israeli surveillance was by deploying commanders on the ground.
Israel said it killed four IRGC officers helping Hezbollah co-ordinate attacks in a strike on a Beirut hotel this week, but Iran said those killed were diplomats. Lebanon later summoned Iran’s envoy after saying it had uncovered an IRGC operation on its territory and vowed to expel any Iranian Guards involved in the war.
The attacks have left Israel fighting a multi-front war. Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer turned analyst, has suggested that there are limits to what Israel can achieve through military force alone.
“In Lebanon, when Hezbollah attacked, we said Hezbollah fell into our strategic trap and now we can start the war against them,” he told a think tank event.
“But now I think that maybe we fell into the strategic trap of Hezbollah, knowing that we cannot dismantle this organisation kinetically,” he said. “We have so many problems.”
Despite Iran’s efforts to maintain co-ordination with its proxies while avoiding Israeli surveillance, the picture appears far more fragmented than it was after the October 7 Hamas attacks in 2023. At that time, groups from Lebanon to Iraq and Yemen established a daily co-ordination process through a joint operations mechanism, mainly focused on selecting targets and timing attacks against Israel and US forces, officials and militants told The National back then.
“It is difficult to imagine that such a decisive battle would be easy or without losses, which is why there is no escaping it,” said a source close to Hezbollah. “At the same time, the parties of the [so-called] Axis of Resistance are committed to protecting each other’s backs and acting together”.
He suggested that “any escalation in one place means escalation elsewhere, and any truce in one arena will be linked to a truce in another.”
While Iraqi militias have announced attacks against US and foreign targets in Iraq, the most notable pro-Iran player still absent from the battlefield is the Yemeni rebels.
A source in Sanaa with knowledge of the Houthis' plans told The National last week that the rebels would “intervene at the appropriate time”, and the decision will be taken “if there is a necessity to do so”.
If the Houthis resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea while the Strait of Hormuz is closed by Iran, the war would quickly trigger an even bigger global economic shock. The Red Sea–Suez route carries 12 to 15 per cent of global trade, while the Strait of Hormuz handles roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply. Disruptions to both would further drive up oil prices, force ships to reroute around Africa and risk new military action against Yemen.
“At some point, the Houthis will inevitably join in”, said the regional commander.
